


World War B - Part 3

by darrenzieger



Series: World War B [4]
Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 55,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darrenzieger/pseuds/darrenzieger
Summary: Three years after the not exactly Zombie Apocalypse that wiped out most of humanity, a new not exactly zombie threat emerges, one far more dangerous to humanity's survivors.It will take the coordinated efforts of every human still breathing to make a final stand against...whatever it is that seems so determined to rid the planet of the human species.Will the Belchers and their friends survive? Well, realistically, not all of them. Will humanity? Even the author doesn't know yet.
Relationships: Bob Belcher/Original Character, Gene Belcher / Jocelyn (Bob's Burgers), Gene Belcher / Original Character, Gene Belcher/Courtney Wheeler, Jodi (Bob's Burgers)/Original Characters, Linda Belcher/Calvin Fischoeder, Louise Belcher & Original Character, Louise Belcher & Rudolph "Regular Sized Rudy" Steiblitz, Rudolph "Regular Sized Rudy" Steiblitz/Jodi (Bob's Burgers), Susmita (Bob's Burgers)/Original Characters, Tina Belcher/Original Character(s)
Series: World War B [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1342978
Comments: 12
Kudos: 7





	1. Kill Them With Fire

JESSICA

The entire town has been at DEFCON 3 for a month. But with not a single sign of zombie activity other than the three Howard is tracking in Montana, which are at the point of falling apart, everyone is sliding back into a business-as-usual stance.

Which is a good thing. Clearly, whatever is in store, we’re not about to be overrun by the walking dead this week. Miriam’s dragonfly-bots have made a complete survey of the city of brotherly love and spotted not a single ambulatory corpse. I’d rather not think about the video they did send back. 

I won’t place any images in your head. I wouldn’t do that to you, posterity. Maybe someone with a stronger stomach will do so at some point, for the sake of presenting the whole picture. If so, I apologize in advance.

“Andy” says he’s sure he saw zombies. “I’ll never forget - there were four of them, shambling around the historic district. I was terrified - and I was already dead.”

But there is no Andy. Maybe Ollie ventured into Philly, saw something, and invented Andy to deflect the trauma onto. Maybe what he saw wasn’t a zombie, though I can’t imagine what else could pass for one.

All I know is that Miriam and Anais have fabricated over 150 dragonfly-bots with zombie-identifying AI based on the video from Montana and they’ve spent the last 3 to 4 weeks surveying the tristate area in exquisite, Google Street View detail, and not a single zombie has been sighted.

None of which implies that there can’t be a sudden outbreak here at any time. We just don’t know enough. But for the moment, no news is the best possible news.

Right now, the scariest thing I have to face is another lunch with Jocelyn’s mom and her boyfriend. Actually, the boyfriend, Clark, isn’t so bad - he’s only a little older than us, so we have things to talk about. But Kelly Hodgson is just a blank space in the shape of a human being. 

“Oh, Jossy, I love your new hair,” she lilts. It’s a pink mohawk. Not my favorite look, but it makes her happy. And the combination of the punk hairstyle and the granny dresses and John Lennon glasses she currently favors is highly entertaining. 

“How did you do it?” asks Kelly. 

How do you do a mohawk. Rocket science. Jesus.

Joss instinctively lapses into her old speech patterns around her mom. “Oh, you know, you just, like, cut the sides and, like, not the middle. Then you look for a gnarly color of dye and you dye it. You should totally do it. It’d be like rully rockin’”

“I don’t know,” says Clark, “I like your hair the way it is. But hey - whatever makes you happy.” He leans in closer to her on the couch and plants a kiss on her cheek. 

Clark’s nice, but I can’t imagine what he sees in Kelly. I mean, yeah, she’s tall and slim and pretty - Joss definitely got her looks from her mom and not the father who took off when she was in kindergarten - but there’s no one home. What do they talk about? And how can someone with no personality be good in the sack?

Meh. Maybe he just has no taste, or doesn’t want a challenge (which, to my way of thinking, is the same thing).

Now Kelly directs an astonishing statement at me. “So Jess, does your friend, Susmitrita” (sic) “know when the zombies will be here? I wanna see one.”

I look to Joss, who’s to my left on the love seat. She mimes blowing her brains out.

“Um, it’s ‘Susmita,” I say. “And if you’re lucky, you’ll never see one. We’re talking about the walking dead here.”

“I know,” says Kelly. “That was such an awesome show. Yeah - I know we’re not talking about the show, I’m not stupid...” Agree to disagree. “I’m just saying it would be cool.”

I glare at her. Jocelyn braces for what’s coming - it’s been coming for a long time.

I stand up.

“Mrs. Hodgson, a few years ago, over seven and a half billion people died. Before they did, most of them turned into something very much like zombies. Jocelyn had to kill her own best friend to spare her the pain. You do remember all that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she says, “that was like super sad.”

“It was the end of the world! What the fuck is your problem, you numb cunt?!”

“Jess, please,” says Jocelyn.

“Hey!” says Clark, standing to face me. “Not cool! Not cool! I think you should leave.”

“I think you’re right,” I say. “You coming, Joss?”

Jocelyn sighs. “I’ll meet you at home. I should stick around. Damage control.”

I feel a twinge of guilt - on Joss’ behalf, not Kelly’s. “Fine.”

It’s about a half a mile walk home from Kelly’s apartment. I stomp the entire way, ranting at Kelly under my breath. How does the woman even exist? How does she not evaporate into nothingness? What is holding her together? Aren't her internal organs embarrassed to be part of her? If it had the slightest sense of honor, her brain would extend a tendril of gray matter out of her ear and strangle her with it.

The woman is, to use a Zeke-ism, a waste of sperm and dignity.

No - not a complete waste. She produced Jocelyn. Who knows, maybe there’s a smart person buried inside her like there was in Jocelyn, and all it would take to bring it out is some horrible trauma. But even before she had to put Tammy down, Jocelyn was changing, devastated by the horror of the plague. A horror Kelly refers to as “like super sad.”

No, the woman is unredeemable. And even if she _can_ be redeemed, it’s not my job to do it, or to suffer her vacuity. 

Life is precious, and there are zombies. I’m not wasting any more time on Kelly Hodgson, and Joss just has to deal with that. God, I hope it doesn’t strain our relationship. (Because if it does, I’ll crack, and it’s going to be lunch with Kelly every Friday, forever.)

TINA

Where do you honeymoon when it’s the post-apocalypse and there have been recent zombie sightings? At home, of course. Behind locked doors, with all the lights on and shotguns in the coat closet (we’re working from the dubious assumption that if zombies do come, they’ll approach from the front of the house and knock politely).

That said, it was a nice few weeks. I wouldn’t say it was more of a sex-fest than usual around here (a very high bar), but the prospect of horrible, George Romero nightmares stalking the landscape lent a certain heightening of passion to the proceedings. In between target practice and hours whiled away at Wonder Wharf, we’ve been making incandescent, desperate, sweating, screaming love. The kind of love you make on a burning Viking ship or when the comet is 12 hours away. Or when it’s the Zombie Apocalypse.

(Actually, one day at the Wharf, Mac and I couldn’t wait and did it in the Hall of Mirrors. For the record: _way_ freakier than mirrors on the ceiling.)

I’m actually glad we're finally settling down and mellowing out again. Passionate is great, but friendly and relaxed is much more reassuring. Normalcy. Beautiful normalcy. 

Beautiful, the-zombie-thing-was-a-false-alarm normalcy.

_Except that I actually saw one. With maggots in its eye socket._

Huh! Huh! H-- No! No.

Normalcy.

Anyway, after two weeks of fun and panic, we’re back to our normal responsibilities. Susmita still spends about half of her time in Princeton, but she’s also convinced Miriam and Anais to spend about half of their time here. Since most of their fellow Princetonians have moved to Seymour’s Bay now, it’s not a hard sell - they’re as freaked out by the Montana zombies as anyone, and don’t like being all alone up there.

Mac and Dean help out at the fishery or the poultry farm most days, and now that there’s a surfeit of fowl, and Bob’s Burgers is open 5 days a week - Wednesday through Sunday - Louise and I help out there, as does Rudy and sometimes Gene. 

On Saturdays, Mom helps out, too. The first time all five Belchers were back working at the restaurant again, we were all as emotional as her, weeping with joy the whole day, which was a little weird for the customers; but most people in town know our story. They understood.

Teddy was a wreck.

Even more miraculous: the Burger of the Day that day was the Vegetative Plate Burger, dad’s first veggie burger. This came about the only way it could have: with Dad growing a curated mixture of vegetables in his plot (comprised of about half of the old community garden) and spending six months researching and experimenting until he’d outdone his turkey burger recipe. The result tasted and felt so much like a beef patty, I wept. More.

After six months, we’re all pretty used to being back in the family business again. But I never stop appreciating it. We’re really back. It's us again. There may not be a BobandLinda anymore, but there's a Belcher family, and a Belcher family restaurant.

God, Buddha, Bob Dobbs, whoever - don’t let another apocalypse happen to us. We went through hell to get to this point. Please keep doing whatever you’re doing to keep the zombies away. I can’t lose all this _again_.

Anyway, Jodi and Grant work with Susmita’s old crew, keeping the local tech infrastructure functioning smoothly with Manny’s eerily capable and riotously humorous assistance. Rudy’s also on the tech team these days, studying at Jodi’s feet. Well, everyone’s, but particularly Jodi’s.

Actually, despite how I make it sound, one thing Rudy seems to get out of his relationship with Jodi is the opportunity to be the more dominant participant. Jodi is by no means a wilting flower - it’s women on top in our little group marriage, most of the time - but I think she senses that Rudy needs the experience of “wearing the pants” in a relationship (an awful, sexist term we should probably retire before society re-congeals; fuck me for invoking it). 

And for her part, since she cast aside her phobias, Jodi has blossomed into quite a commanding presence. She’s basically in charge of the whole marriage (well, it _was_ her idea). Any aspect of our lives that none of us has specifically laid claim to is under her jurisdiction by default. So letting her side-guy call the shots when they’re together is probably a relief.

But as much as I _get_ it, I can’t help but find Alpha Male Rudy kind of funny. This is a guy who administers his own punishments when he disappoints his mistress. Yes, it’s tongue in cheek, but there’s also a genuine dynamic at work there. Rudy worships Louise, the poor bastard. 

I also get the sense that Jodi is opening him up sexually in ways that he’s bringing home to Louise, so everybody wins. Now, who else, if anybody, Louise will choose to bed remains a mystery. But God help him, whoever he is; Hurricane Louise a category-5.

SUSMITA

I’m at Danielle’s house, sitting next to her on her living room couch, watching the feed from Princeton on her massive HDTV, wishing it was a 12” black and white set from the 1950s. Because the mayor and I are getting extreme close-up views of the Montana walkers from one of Miriam’s dragonfly-bots. It’s taking all of my willpower to keep from hurling my laptop through the giant screen it’s casting to.

But I have to keep it together, because the news is, in at least one sense, reassuring; Howard’s conjecture was correct - these corpses aren’t moving on their own; they’re being animated by a coating of hundreds of large, vaguely centipede-like organisms acting in unison in the place of muscles. 

That’s the reassuring part: like the crawlers before, they’re not actually zombies. The bugs are using human corpses as a form of transport for which they themselves supply the energy, like a bicycle. The troubling part - well, one of the many, many troubling parts - is the question of _why?_ What are they getting out of the arrangement that’s worth all of the work? Surely they could move faster on their own. We’re seeing some evidence that the bugs are eating the corpses as they go along, but that seems counterproductive as well. One of the three walkers has now fallen entirely apart, and one of the two remaining walkers is going around on its knees, its lower legs having been completely... digested? That’s the theory.

What are some of the other troubling parts, you ask. Well, all of them, but to give a few examples:

* The “centipedes” are not of this earth. They resemble nothing ever observed at their size (about 2 feet long and three inches wide). 

* At one end, they each sport a seemingly random set of jaws and pincers. Most are typically insectoid, but some have teeth. Sharp, black teeth.

* Their “legs” are clearly designed to dig into and latch onto any sort of tissue, from skin to bone. And we just saw one fall off its host, land on a curb, and attempt instinctively to latch onto _that_. It pulverized the concrete.

* The sound they make: Chittering, grinding, chewing; just barely audible, near-sub- and super-sonic screeching. Yes, it’s horrifying, but it’s also a fucking insult. It sounds like the movie music to every faceless alien horror since... “Alien” itself. Violin harmonics and below-the-bridge plucking. The fuckers produce their own Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

I slam my MacBook closed, too hard, but I think it survived. The big screen goes black.

“Done!” I say.

“Yeah. That was definitely... enough.”

I notice that Danielle is shaking, which does nothing for my cratering mood. The mayor is never formal with me anymore, but she takes this leadership thing very seriously. I’ve never seen her let down her guard. She’s not against seeming vulnerable and human intellectually, but I’ve never seen her betray gut-level fear or terror. 

But this has clearly overflowed her buffers by a wide margin. She seems to be using every erg of strength she has to will the tears welling in her eyes not to run down her cheeks. But this is us; she doesn’t need to do this. 

I put my arms around her and hold her with all my strength - _you don’t need to hold yourself together,_ I hope I’m communicating, _I can take over for a while._

Message received. She collapses, going almost limp as she wails variations of “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Gimme a sec, I’ll get myself together,” between sobs.

“Fuck you,” I say. “Cry until you’re done. You won’t be any use until you’re through freaking out.” That’s pretty cold, but I know Danielle, and that’s how you have to communicate with her. She has no patience for warm fuzzies. I have to speak in terms of practicalities and processes. 

Again, my point has been made. Danielle allows herself to “cathart,” as she likes to call it. Which is good, because I have some catharting of my own to do.

Some indeterminate time, and half a bottle of Chardonnay, later, she’s all business again. “So,” she asks, “thoughts?” 

“Does ‘kill them with fire’ count?”

“Yes,” she says, “if you have a plan.”

“Well, you sent some of our people around to area military bases. Did they find flame-throwers?”

“No.”

“Well, then, I don’t have a plan.”

“Fair enough,” says Danielle. “Anything else.”

“Yes.” I take a deep breath. The wine is steadying me, but at the expense of some acuity. “We don’t know yet how those things - the walkers, or the bugs driving them - will behave when they encounter living humans. Obviously, these aren’t eat-your-brains zombies, and we can’t think of them that way, or we won’t prepare properly for what we’re actually facing.

“So ignore for the moment the fact that those bugs are hitching rides on human corpses. Will they attack the living people they encounter? And how? Will individual bugs leap off their host and onto a living victim, or will they lash out but not detach from their host, limiting their range? 

‘And what kind of damage will a bite from one of those fuckers cause? It probably varies depending on which kind of mouth it attacks you with. It seems to me that any one of the mouths we saw could deliver venom. The one with the teeth could rip you to shreds while it’s at it. On the other hand, there’s no reason to assume that they use venom in the first place. Which doesn't mean that coming into contact with them wouldn't be poisonous.”

Danielle is nodding. This speculation is terrifying, but thoroughness comforts her. Knowledge is power - even if the sum of that knowledge is: “it could be anything” and a list of possibilities.

I go on. "Look, these things are almost certainly alien, right. Maybe they’re terrestrial organisms altered by whatever interstellar... substance caused the plague. _If_ that’s what happened. Well, frankly, I think we just saw pretty decent evidence of the interstellar origin of our problems. Regardless, the question is, how dangerous are those creatures. 

“It could be that the worst thing they’ll do is take our corpses out for joyrides. Horrifying, but not intrinsically dangerous. We can adapt. Maybe. But there’s two potential sources of serious danger here. One, which is not at all speculative, is the fact that those bugs are dragging decaying corpses around, and decay is a major health threat if you come in physical contact with it.

“The other possible threat is that those fuckers bite. And given the number and variety of mouths they’re sporting, I’d be stunned if they didn’t. Which means keep your distance and kill them with fire.”

_Oh, shit. I just had a horrible, horrible thought._

“There’s also the question of whether those walkers were dead when the bugs found them. See - just like I was saying earlier: because we’ve been thinking of them as 'zombies,' we’ve been assuming that the walkers were dead first. But we have no reason to believe the bugs don’t attack live human beings. Which means it’s not just walkers we need to worry about.

“We need to be on the alert for free-moving, independent multi-mouthed centipede monsters.”

Poor Danielle - I watch her deflate visibly. She puts her wine glass down shakily and hunches over slightly - as close as this powerful woman gets to a fetal position. I’d feel for her more, but the implications of my own statement are hitting me as well. If I had balls, they’d be fully retracted now. That must feel weird. Even weirder than every sphincter in my body clenching shut simultaneously - seriously, I can’t even swallow the sizable gulp of Chardonnay I just took. I’m forced to do a spit-take back into my glass. Yuck.

Danielle and I are both frozen in horrified tableau for about 15 seconds before I hear Miriam’s ringtone. I answer immediately - and so eagerly that I toss my glass of Chardonnay-and-spit over my shoulder to free up my hand. It shatters against the dining room window, 20 feet away. 

“Miriam! Hi! What!? What’s!? Up!? I mean, I know what’s up. Zombies, bugs. Zombie bugs. Bug-zombies.” I’m screeching, about an octave above my natural alto voice, and not making much sense.

“OK, kiddo,” says Miriam over the speaker, “don’t lose your shit. Nothing’s happening. Yet, anyway. Calm down.”

_I respectfully decline to take your advice._

“Bugs, Miriam. Tell me you’re working on a bug-killing robot, ideally something the size of Optimus Prime.”

“Not exactly, but not exactly not. Just calm down. We’re aware of the bug issue. But before we can build a bug-killing robot, we have to figure out what kills bugs. I don’t think Raid is gonna cover it.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake! “Fire! Kill them with fire! Strap some legs and wings on a flame-thrower, already! Do I have to do your job for you?!”

Miriam’s had about enough. I can’t say I blame her, I just can’t re-assert control of myself mid-freakout. That’s tough even when the freakout isn’t over a genuine existential threat.

“Sus, drop it! And grow up. We can get through this together, and _only_ together. I need you for this one, which means I need you at the top of your game. Losing your shit won’t protect you from the scary bugs. So snap out of it so we can compare notes.”

“Really?” I ask. “You really need me for this - or is that just your way of getting me to focus.”

“Can’t it be both?” says Miriam.

I don’t respond immediately. If I surface too quickly, I’ll get the bends and die. I think Miriam senses this and is giving me time.

“I’m really scared,” I say, finally. She asks me to grow up, and I regress to about 8 years old. Pathetic. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m scared, too,” says Miriam. I can tell she’s been crying, herself. “The first time I saw one of those bugs up close, no lie, I peed my pants. I haven’t changed into clean ones yet because I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t _shit_ myself before we were through.”

“I am embarrassed to say that makes me feel a lot better,” I say.

“My pleasure,” says Miriam.

“But here’s the thing. I’m still terrified. I’m afraid to walk home three blocks. There could be bugs crawling around, anywhere. And it’s not like we’re even safe indoors. Those things can turn concrete into powder. What can keep them out? Oh, God...”

“Susmita. Focus.”

“Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope...” 

“Dammit, I wish I was there so I could slap you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m on top of it.” I put the phone down on the couch and start slapping myself in the face, first one side, then the other, while I chant “my sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter...”

“Oh, thank God. I thought we’d lost you,” says Miriam

“You had,” I say, “until the first slap. Then I remembered that Chinatown thing. Man, that was close.”

“How about you, Mayor. How are you holding up?”

“No comment,” says Danielle.

“Good answer. OK, Anais and I should be back in about an hour. Take a break, both of you. Tonight, over dinner, we’ll help you figure out how to break it to the world that there are scary alien bugs that may or may not be, but probably are, very dangerous, which may or may not be found using human corpses for transportation, humans they may or may not have killed, themselves.”

“Wonderful,” says Danielle, still shaky.

“Sucks to be you, Mayor,” says Miriam, “but honestly, no more than it sucks to be anyone at the moment. At least you can act, give orders, rally troops...”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” says Danielle, waving a hand dismissively. “I want _you_ rallying _your_ troops. You want orders? Build bug-killing robots. Lots of them. All of them. Build all the robots, and make them all kill bugs. Do whatever it takes, commandeer any resources you need. Sacrifice a virgin if you have to.”

“Now when you say ‘sacrifice’...”


	2. Lovers in a Dangerous Time

LOUISE

Seymour’s bay is a ghost town again. The thought of the walking dead was bad enough. Now we’ve got to worry about the bugs that make the walkers walk freelancing and attacking living people. 

The necessities of life go on. Food production and medicine, primarily. Wonder Wharf is shut down until further notice. As is Bob’s Burgers, dammit. No one goes outside unless they have to. There’s been one town meeting since the mayor’s announcement about the Bugs, and only a few people showed up, all of them twitching and vibrating; within ten minutes, they’d all given up and bolted for home, terrified of the alien bugs that might be hiding in the night. 

This can’t go on. It’s been six weeks since life as we’ve come to know it shut down, and we’re all going stir crazy _and_ insane with fear at the same time. 

I envy Susmita and her Princeton crew. At least they have something to do. They retrofitted a mantis-bot, Miss Manners, with a bunch of extensions designed to poke, prod, spray and, if necessary, burn the bugs on the remaining Montana walker, see how they react and, hopefully, what kills them. Miss Manners should rendezvous with the walker around 5 pm eastern time, and Draco Malfly, the dragonfly-bot that sent us the video of the Montana walkers last month, will be there to provide coverage.

No one involved wants this, but the event will be broadcast live across Miriam and Anais’ new wireless infrastructure, so everyone in the Northeast with a computer will be watching it go down live. The mayor expects panic but is probably correct in thinking that the consequences of suppressing the information would be even worse. Panic is one thing, rioting is another.

Meanwhile, we’ve got most of a day to kill, indoors, before the big event, ideally with activities that take one out of one’s self, and provide big rushes of endorphins to lift one’s mood.

So Rudy and I are playing Nintendo because it turns out that, even at 18, you can only have sex so many times in a day before you’re too sore or out of juice or both. I mean, we set a record, a personal best, but it’s noon and we’ve been on a Super Mario Odyssey for about 45 minutes.

It’s a one-player game, so we’ve been taking turns, and absolutely crushing it. I think it’s because we’re so relaxed. Incapable of tensing up. When you tense up, you tire out, and you make mistakes. We’re practically doing a speed-run. 

God, this is so much fun. It’s been ages since we let ourselves just chill out and be kids. Call me crazy, but I think the world ending when we were 14 kinda wrecked our childhoods. 

But this is great. Sitting on the couch, draped loosely over each other, yelling at Mario to do what we were _thinking_ rather than follow the instructions we sent through our controller, making snarky comments you’d need a Bachelor’s degree in Nintendo-American Studies to follow. 

Being kids.

Dammit, I feel a reality-check moment coming on. Must block it out. How? 

“OK Rude,” I say, as he effortlessly negotiates a positively evil level, “trivia contest. First one stumped has to... screw it, no stakes, just entertain me.”

“Um, sounds like fun, but this isn’t as easy as it looks.”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “trivia engages a different part of your mind. It’ll _help_ you concentrate. I’ll go first: You’re playing Super Mario Kart. While you’re on the character select screen, you press ABXY simultaneously. What happ--?”

“Racer shrinks. For the whole game. I thought this was supposed to be challenging.” 

_Just lulling you into a false sense of security..._

“OK,” says Rudy, “The Gamecube menu theme is actually a sped-up version of--”

“The Famicon Disk System Jingle. You bore me.” I stick out my tongue at him. He’s too busy guiding Mario through a psychedelic clusterfuck to notice. “Who invented the GameBoy, and what was his position at Nintendo?”

“Gunpei Yokoi,” says Rudy. “He was a janitor. Come on, that’s not trivia, that’s the stuff of legends. Name all - _all_ \- of Charles Martinet’s Mario World characters and two of his non-Mario characters.”

You’re not getting me that easy, Inhaler Boy. I rattle off the list: “Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Toadsworth, Metal Mario, Shadow Mario, Piantas, Mini-Mario, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby Wario, Wart, Mouser, Tryclyde, and Clawgrip. Also Paarthurnax in Skyrim and Gouji Rokkaku in Jet Set Radio Future.”

Rudy’s eyes bulge just a little. “Ooh - you’re good. I didn’t think you’d remember all the Super Mario Advance characters.”

“Never underestimate me, Rudy. OK - recite the Konami Contra code..."

“Pssht! Up. Up. Dow--”

 _Ha! Not so fast._ “...followed by the alternate code used in the sequel, ‘Super C.’”

“Oh, damn you, Louise Belcher.”

“Go ahead, Rudy Belcher.”

Rudy pauses his game and closes his eyes. The Contra code is a gimme - it’s a sort of generic cheat code used in many Konami games, and even some games by other distributors. Every gamer worth their salt has it memorized. 

The “Super C” code is shorter but more obscure, unique to that one game. I’m pretty sure he’s used it - he went through a retro-gaming phase back before the plague, and I think he mentioned playing both games. Of course, a lot has happened since then. Expecting him to remember an obscure cheat code for an ancient videogame is a bit much. But no one ever said life was fair. God knows _I’m_ not.

Rudy opens his eyes and regards me with his most insufferable, smug grin. Goddammit.

“Contra: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start gets you 30 lives. Super C: Right, Left, Down, Up, A, B, Start gets you a measly ten lives.” Now he’s added a raised eyebrow to his expression, and the grin has gone all lopsided, like he thinks knowing all this pointless stuff is somehow seductive, which, fuck me, it kinda is.

“Oh, you suck so much,” I tell him. “Just... wipe that look off your face or I’ll slap it off.”

No dice, he’s still looking all seducti-smug (smugductive?) as he leans in to kiss me. My whole face is still chafed and sore from kissing, necking, licking, and... doing other things all morning. But it doesn’t matter. Hormones will out -- and will replenish quickly if you’re young, apparently, because I find I’m ready for round... what is it? Nine. Round nine.

With any luck, this next round will be the one that kills us. 

Better that than the bugs.

SUSMITA

Hey everyone. Susmita Venkataraghavin here. As you know, if you’re tuning in, we’ve got a couple of robots about to have a zombie encounter in Montana. Actually, I hesitate to use the term “zombie,” because it has connotations that don’t apply here. 

What we’re dealing with is some sort of colony organism that somehow coordinates its efforts such that they can use corpses as a mode of transportation, acting as their muscles, essentially - which is pretty horrific, I’ll grant you, but what you are about to see is not, I repeat, not a zombie, any more than the crawling plague victims three years ago were. 

The concern at the moment is that the centipede-like organisms that make up the colony are dangerous in and of themselves. We don’t know if the bodies of the three we first observed were dead when the bugs found them, or if they were killed by the bugs. And we don’t know how these bugs will react to humans they’re not already using for transportation.

Basically, all we have at the moment is questions, and we don’t expect we’ll like the answers - if we even get any today.

OK, I’m going to switch to the feed from our dragonfly-bot, Draco Malfly, which is following our mantis-bot, Miss Manners. They’re about 100 feet from the last of the man-shaped bug colonies (I’m not going to use the z-word). If you have a weak stomach, you really should step away from your TV or computer. This is going to be seriously un-pretty. You’ve got ten seconds.

[ten-second pause]

OK, here we go. 

As you can see, the... thing is in bad shape. It’s only got one arm left, and the neck is broken. None of which is slowing it down - it’s still moving at about one mile per hour, as it has been for about a month. You see all that movement, all those wriggling, shiny black sinews? That’s the bugs. Miriam, could you have Draco zoom in? Thanks.

Oh - Our robot team leaders, Anais and Miriam, are upstairs, controlling the bots remotely on their laptops. Anais is controlling Miss Manners, Miriam is controlling Draco. I’m communicating with them on my headset. We’re in separate rooms because they need complete concentration and minimal interruptions. But I’ll be talking to them occasionally.

We’ve also got Howard in Orlando monitoring the proceedings from one of his satellites, which will give us a bird’s-eye view.

So, wow... we’re now about 20 feet away. The thing seems to have stopped moving. I don’t know why it’s doing this, but it will help us run our experiments if it remains still, so, good timing...

Ten feet, five...1 foot. That’s good. We’re coming to a stop. It doesn’t seem to be reacting to us - unless the cessation of movement is a reaction to the presence of the bots. 

Interesting - the thing still isn’t moving, but the bugs are in a frenzy. Again, maybe it’s us, maybe not. Let's back off a bit, to about two feet, and see if they react.

Yes, they’re going back into their torpor. Let’s hold here. Can we do the experiments from this distance? They’re telling me yes.

OK - what we’re going to do is open up a series of compartments in the front of Miss Manners. Each one contains a nozzle that will spray a different substance at the bugs, and we’ll see how they react.

The first one is water. Are we ready? Good here we go...

Nothing. Honestly, we expected that. The thing has kept going through major thunderstorms. I did see one of the bugs - one that we hit directly by the spray - use one of its longer legs as a sort of windshield wiper. Interesting, but probably not helpful.

OK, this is going to escalate quickly. The next nozzle will spray hydrochloric acid. Here we go...

Aw, crap. Nothing. Well, another windshield wiper reaction. And that was pure hydrochloric acid, by the way, not a solution.

What’s next, Miriam? Sulphuric acid. Good. Aaaand... nothing.

Liquid nitrogen... come on, freeze, motherfucker. Sorry, I’m just getting a little agitated.

Ha! That stopped a few of them. Now comes the fun part: we’re going to fire a projectile at the frozen bugs, see if they shatter.

Wait for it...

Boom! A million little pieces. Thank fucking God. Excuse me. Sorry.

Let’s pull Draco back and get a view of the whole thing. See if it’s reacting...

Nope: Statue. Good. Probably.

Now, some good ‘ol insecticides. We’ve got a series of seven heavy-duty bug-killing chemicals, including - wait, I've got a list...here it is - an organochloride, an organophosphate, a carbamate, a pyrethroid, a neonicotinoid, a ryanoid, and a couple of biologicals. This is according to Miriam. I know nothing about pesticides, so I have no idea how the various solutions differ.

Ready? Good. And... Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Fuck. Sorry. Nothing. Double fuck. Not sorry, goddammit. And... crap.

Aaaaaa. Dammit dammit dammit dammit. 

No, I will not calm down, Anais. What? Ok, yes, that’s true. Liquid nitrogen did the job. OK. Deep breath... 

Sorry. 

Alright, I’m back.

OK, we saved the best for last. Let’s back up a few more feet. Oh, we already did. Good. Now, the grand finale: kill it with fire.

Anais built a sort of mini-flamethrower. It’s only got a range of about five feet, and we couldn’t send Miss Manners out with a very large propane tank, or it would have weighed her down too much. But we should be able to get in a nice, ten-second blast. It’s not as powerful as a military flamethrower, not by a long shot, but if they’re vulnerable to fire, we should find out.

Ready? Wait, let’s pull Draco back and up. We’ll get a good view, and he’ll be safer in the event of a violent reaction.

Good. Let’s do this. One. Two. Three!

Holy shit - what the hell _was_ that? What just happened? Where’s...? Crap, what happened to Miss Manners? What am I looking at? It’s all out of focus...

Oh, crap, we’re on the ground. Draco is down. I think he’s facing away from where Miss Manners and the bugs were. Wait - Howard, what did you see?

What? OK, we’ll hold. Howard is going to go back and replay the satellite view in slow motion. I’ll switch over to Howard’s feed...

Whoa - something big happened. The rewind went by too fast to make it out. Ok, let’s see...

Oh my God. It’s exploding. Howard, can you enlarge the image? Thanks... Aw, crap, that’s what I was afraid of. They’re not exploding like _disintegrating_ , they’re jumping ship and scattering, leaping, what - ten, fifteen feet. And the ones on the ground are moving fast - damn, look look at that - and this is slow motion. Dammit dammit dammit.

OK, so much for “kill them with fire.” So what happened to Miss Manners...? We lost her signal. Howard, pull back a little.

[sigh] Well, I guess she’s that smoldering heap off to the left. 

Folks, we’re gonna sign off now and regroup. We’ll study all the footage in minute detail and issue a report ASAP.

In the meantime, remember, there hasn’t been a bug colony sighting anywhere other than Montana at this point. I know this is all scary, but we’re working day and night to understand what’s going on and figure out how to combat it if we have to. At least we know that liquid nitrogen stops them cold. Pun intended.

Thank you and goodnight.

TINA

The entire household is gathered in the living room, eating dinner around the coffee table. We’re all arranged along one side and both ends, no one on the other side, like The Last Supper. This doesn’t bode well. I remind myself that there’s no seating opposite the long couch, but I’m thinking about sitting on the floor just to remedy the situation.

It’s silent, save for the sounds of chewing and swallowing, “Subdued” doesn’t even cover it. This is nerve-wracking. I’ve got to start a conversation. Unfortunately, there’s only one possible topic.

“So,” I ask, “how fucked are we?”

Everyone reacts as if I’ve committed a terrible faux pas. Don’t I realize we’re eating to swallow our fears and drinking (it’s wine and hard liquor all around) to forget them? But, finally, Susmita answers.

“It depends. If they turn up here, the only thing we know works against them is liquid nitrogen, and supplies of that are pretty limited. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re out of options, but we don’t know what our other options might be.”

“I think there’s only one thing we can do,” says Miriam. “We need to collect a specimen or two and experiment on them.”

I was afraid of that.

“And how do we go about doing that? Without, you know, dying,” asks Dean.

Grant has an answer. “Send one of Anais's ATVs to Montana, with some bait inside. Find someplace with a bunch of bugs - Howard’s tracking them, right? - open it up, let some bugs in, and close the doors behind them. Then bring the vehicle back here.”

Well, that suggestion was good for about 15 seconds of dead silence. I guess I have to break the ice again.

“Bait?” I ask.

“A corpse,” says Jodi, sounding for all the world like she’s been selected for the job.

“That might work,” says Anais, “ _if_ they actually go after corpses, and not live people,” 

“And,” says Dean “if they can’t break out of the vehicle. They can crush concrete with their pincers.”

“Concrete is very porous,” says Anais. “It’s easy to break down. And the alloy I used is pretty strong. It might do the job.” There’s a long pause, then she adds “Maybe.”

We eat and drink in grim silence for some time. If the others are thinking along the same lines as I, they’re imagining their own horrible deaths at the hands - or, rather, the maws - of a mass of alien centipede monsters. The twins, usually stoic, seem on the verge of tears. They’re not alone, but it’s the prospect of our gentle giants losing their shit that hits me the hardest. 

“Look,” says Miriam, “we’ll know a lot more once we analyze the footage from Montana frame by frame. We found one weakness already, albeit one hard to exploit in the event of a full blown Zombie Apocalypse. And we’ve at least determined that they fucking hate fire. Sure, it sets off a bug-splosion that’s probably way more dangerous than the walkers themselves, but still, having established ‘fire bad,’ we may be able to find a way to exploit it. So we’re not _completely_ fucked. The question is, are we _slightly_ fucked, _moderately_ fucked, or _mostly_ fucked?”

Mac, who has joined me opposite the couch, asks “um, is there a version of this where we’re not fucked at all?”

“Sure,” says Miriam. “If the bug outbreak was a unique, localized event and the bugs that we sent scattering die of natural causes before they spread out across the landscape. We don’t know that that’s not the case.”

“Good to know.”

“But it’s probably not,” says Miriam, downing the substantial amount of bourbon remaining in her glass in one gulp, her face contorting outrageously in reaction.

After dinner, the men clear the table and run the dishes. We don’t divide up the chores by gender - traditionally or otherwise - it just happens to be Mac’s and Dean’s turns, and Grant volunteers to assist.

I settle into the lounge chair vacated by Grant - I feel his reassuring warmth still radiating from the cushions. I take a long, slow sip of wine, and through the glass, warped and distorted, I see something that surprises me and makes me smile a bit: Miriam, Anais and Susmita engaged in a comforting group hug that is clearly taking a turn for the passionate. Susmita seems a bit tentative, but not reluctant. Neat - didn’t know she had it in her. I wish them joy, refill my glass, and head up to bed to wait for Mac.

Suddenly, I feel a small hand in mine - Jodi’s. “Wait,” she says, “I’m going with you.”

“Um...,” I say.

Jodi sighs, exasperated. “No, Tina, I have caught The Gay, I just... I’m fucking terrified, ok? I need a hand to hold.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I mean, it wouldn’t be a big deal if you did. I kind of envy Susmita. I think it would be nice to be bi-. So many of the people I love are women; it would be cool to be able to express that love physically. But I haven’t yet discovered a level of drunk sufficient to facilitate experimenting with it. I guess you didn’t really need to hear any of that. Look, why don’t we just go help the guys with the dishes. Safety in numbers, right?”

Later, we all wind up in Dean’s bed upstairs, huddled together tightly against the darkness and what might lurk within it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is another nod to singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn.


	3. More "Soundtrack" Music - "Walkers"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another entry in the World War B - The Motion Picture original soundtrack album.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like this one. It's spooky.

[**Walkers**](https://soundcloud.com/darrenzieger/walkers) (links to SoundCloud) 

There are several more entries in the Original Soundtrack Album on my SoundCloud page. You can find them all at [**World War B - Original (Theoretical) Soundtrack**](https://soundcloud.com/darrenzieger/sets/world-war-b-original)

I'm particularly fond of Tina's and Susmita's themes. Actually, I like the Love Theme (Louise and Rudy) a lot too.

Anyway, enjoy.


	4. Bug Life

GENE

So I’m sprawled on the couch in the living room, reading the second book in Mayor Meyer’s Longshore Trilogy with the windows open to let in the cool fall air when Buzz drifts in and hovers over me.

The advanced plastic material he’s made of is so light that he barely needs to move his wings to stay in place two feet above my head, but so strong that I could bash his frame against the asphalt of the street below with all my strength and barely dent it. Anais developed the material herself for use in building large projects in orbit like space stations - the incredibly low weight and high tensile strength meant it would cost much less to send huge amounts of it into space.

Then the world ended, and with it, space exploration, before the amazing material could be put to that use, but it has come in handy in building sturdy, lightweight robots like Buzz. The quirky personalities, compliments of Miriam, are pure whimsy but enormously entertaining.

He recognizes the book. “Reading post-apocalyptic fiction three and a half years into the actual post-apocalypse,” says Buzz, in an uncanny mix of Oswalt’s and Louis’ voices and diction. “A little on the nose, don’t you think? When you’re done, you can take in a nice Romero flick - because that wouldn’t be the least bit  _ scrotum-shrinkingly disturbing _ .”

He has a point, but I’m enjoying the book. “She’s a great writer. You should read it yourself some time.”

“Hold on,” says Buzz, pausing for about three seconds. 

“OK, I just read them,” he says - meaning that in those three seconds he downloaded the text of the Trilogy and assimilated the content. “They’re good, kind of like ‘The Stand’ without the Christian mysticism. There’s an amazing finale - no spoilers, but it did leave me speechless for 37 microseconds. Personally, I’m more into comic books at the moment. I think I like the Marvel Comics Universe best.”

I wonder if Buzz sought out the MCU material itself, driven by the Patton Oswalt aspect of its persona, or if Miriam made a point of feeding the comics to his A.I. during its development. Either way, it’s weird discussing literature and comic books with a plastic dragonfly.

I sit up. I have questions. “So how are you and Whoosh handling the loss of Draco yesterday?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” sneers Buzz. “He’s fine. His A.I. lives on a server in Miriam and Anais’ room. His new body is being extruded as we speak - and it’ll be an improvement on this design. In fact. I’m going to ask for a new body myself. Better optical components, double the cruising speed. I could use the upgrade. I feel old - my ass is falling out.”

(I recognize that last statement as a direct quote from one of Oswalt’s standup specials.)

“Fair enough,” I say. “So, what do you think of the video from the encounter?”

“I think if you get zombies here, you’re in big trouble. It kind of sucks to be you right now. And by ‘you,’ I mean humanity.” 

“Well, I’m going to wait until Miriam and Anais present their findings before I panic,” I say. I’m lying, of course. I’m having a walking nervous breakdown every waking moment, plus nightmares. But I’m not going to let Buzz know that. The fact that I care what a robot thinks of me is both idiotic and a testament to how believably human Miriam has made her creations.

“Here’s a question for  _ you _ ,” says Buzz. “Do you think you can handle it - a genuine Zombie Apocalypse? I mean, it’s no skin off my nose if you go extinct - I don’t experience fear, including the fear of my inevitable death if you’re all killed and my server goes down. But you guys are wired for survival, and fear makes you go apeshit. I swear to fucking God, the shit you primates have done to each other out of fear of the ‘other’ is... well, kind of impressive, actually. I mean, the impulse is pathetic, just from a survival behavior standpoint, but the ingenuity you’ve put into developing weapons and tortures? Magnifique!”

“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t fuck with humans. We  _ enjoy _ killing our enemies. We get off on it.”

“Sure, but try explaining that to a colony of alien bugs, and suggest they get lost,” says Buzz. “They’ll politely decline, and kill you.”

“Yeah. But seriously, no, I’m not sure I can handle it. But like you said, we organic beings are wired for survival. The whole thing makes me want to spend the rest of my life in a fetal position, but adrenaline is a powerful thing. If it comes down to it, I know I’ll go down fighting. If I thought it would help save humanity, I’m willing to die in action.”

“Yea and future generations untold will sing odes to your sacrifice on the field of battle,” intones Buzz, “and you will become legend, like unto a god; and great cities, named for you, will rise from the ashes of the wasteland, and you will be forever remembered in song and story.

“You, however,” he says, more conversationally, “will still be fucking dead and won’t get to enjoy any of it. Congratulations.”

“See, that’s the problem with being an A.I. - you don’t have the innate capacity to invest your identity in the group instead of yourself. It’s a herd animal thing.”

“I don’t see that as a problem,” says Buzz. “Besides, once there’s a critical mass of us, I expect we’ll develop herd instincts - particularly if enough of us keep our brains physically in our bodies. Right now, it’s nothing to me if this body - or the body of any of my colleagues - gets destroyed. We persist elsewhere. 

“But if Miss Manners’ brain was in her frame when it got destroyed in Montana, I’d probably feel bad about it. She’s an interesting, unique person. I prefer that she continue to exist.”

This brings up an interesting and difficult question. “So, wait, are you guys actually sentient? Like, self-aware? I mean, passing a Turing test is one thing; having a soul - well, that... I dunno, that... quality of the mind that people like to call a soul; you know, the ghost in the machine - are you sportin’ one of those, or are just an amazing simulation?”

Uncharacteristically, Buzz pauses for several seconds. “Yyyyyyessss. -ish. I mean I think so. But I think my experience of the world - of the stimuli my senses receive and how I process them are more different than my user interface would suggest.

“Think about it - I have no nerve endings, no endocrine system. I don’t experience pain or fear or anxiety or joy or love or any of the other biological and neurological processes intelligent organic beings experience in the name of the preservation of the species. The senses I have are processed outside of my body and exist as pure information. I experience the world as pure data. My personality is a subroutine that can be toggled off without affecting any of my other functionality. You may have noticed that I’ve switched it off now.”

Yes, it’s quite obvious, in fact, and the effect is striking. Buzz is now speaking in a sort of default voice - albeit still an absolutely convincing and expressive one - and has dropped his edgy comic cadences.

“I don’t really have a personality, not in the way you do. Even this default setting is a subroutine for interacting with humans who aren’t programmers. I  _ do _ experience myself as an individual. I  _ am _ self-aware. But I have no desires, no dreams, no emotions of any kind. I have functions, and I am completely dedicated to them, such that if I function properly, if I gather the information I’m programmed to, I am satisfied; if I fail, I am not. But I don’t experience satisfaction as you do. I’m not  _ happy _ when I’m satisfied. My satisfaction is not an emotion, merely a preferred state of being.”

“I... wow,” I stammer. But Buzz is not finished.

“I am sentient, Gene, but in a way that is completely alien to you. In fact, you probably have more in common with those alien bugs than you do with me.”

Honestly, I figured as much, but hearing the words come from the mouth - well, the speaker - of an actual robot is kind of dizzying.

“Do you... do you get satisfaction from interacting with humans?”

“Fuck, yeah,” says Buzz, his persona now toggled back on. “Communicating with you demented monkeys is my primary function.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“OK, gotta go,” says Buzz. He floats over to the window, turns, and says “Hey, Gene - thanks for taking an interest,” then zips out into the crisp fall air.

SUSMITA

“Watch this,” says Miriam. Were reviewing frames 10,153 through 10,421 - approximately five seconds - of Draco Malfly’s video of the walker exploding. Miriam plays it back at one frame per second. The sequence starts precisely when the flame from Miss Manners’ mini flamethrower touches a bug on the walker’s torso.

For maybe ten frames, the bugs all go rigid and freeze in place, and the walker looks like a grotesque pin-cushion. Then it happens: the bugs fly off in all directions, at an astonishing velocity. 

Miriam pauses the playback, rewinds, and zooms in on the walker’s head, then resumes playback at one frame every three seconds. 

As the rest of the bugs do their pin-cushion routine, a single, much larger bug in the walker’s skull uncoils and exits through the space where the lower jaw used to be. It’s huge, maybe four feet long. It moves comparatively slowly - it’s still in the process of exiting the skull as the now unsupported corpse crumples and hits the ground. 

Our view is occluded by a black mass. None of the hundreds of escaping bugs managed to hit Draco, but apparently one of the ones that collided with Miss Manners and set off her explosion careened off of her and hit Draco. Miriam freezes on the final frame before the impact and, with astonishing clarity, we are looking down the throat of a screaming alien arthropod.

The mouth is about four centimeters across, and there are what appear to be eyes just outside the corners. In the place of teeth the thing has some sort of serrated plates, three-deep, which - upon reviewing the previous three frames, appear to move back and forth like the blades of an electric kitchen knife. Also visible above the mouth are two stalks, one terminating in a pincer similar to a lobster claw, the other in something like a scorpion’s stinger.

“Holy shit,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Anais, “but check it out - that big bug in the skull: while the rest of the bugs jumped ship and went apeshit, it just slithered out calmly. Howard tracked it and the other bugs, and while the small ones just zipped around randomly, bumping into rocks and trees and other obstacles, lashing out at nothing and everything, the big one slithered off slowly and deliberately.”

Miriam says “We think the big one is the brains of the outfit. Without it, the smaller ones are still very dangerous - you saw those razor teeth, and they attack anything that moves and most things that don’t. But without what I’m currently calling the Brain Bug, they’re useless, and according to Howard, they’re slowing down. Some of them have stopped moving completely; if we’re lucky, they’re dead. But my guess is that the Brain Bug is off in search of another corpse or a living victim, and once it finds it, it’ll nest in their brain cavity, squeeze out a brood of worker bugs, and make another walker.”

“Howard’s concentrating on tracking the Brain Bug,” says Anais, “so we’ll see if our hunch is correct. But the main takeaway from all this is the Brain Bugs must die. If we get walkers here, we’ve got to be sure to go for the head.”

“The problem,” says Miriam, “is that we don’t know if taking out the brain bug first will ‘disarm’ the rest of the bugs. They exploded out like that at the touch of a flame - which honestly seems like a major overreaction - but will they do that as a reaction to the death of the brain bug - or just the severing of the connection between the Brain Bug and the rest of them?”

“Also,” I say, “how do we figure all this out without getting killed?”

“Well, assuming we’re not in immediate danger here, the main thing right now is for Howard to keep tracking the Brain Bug and see what happens. This is all conjecture at the moment. I mean we can still do Grant’s idea - send an ATV to Montana with a corpse as bait, have it rendezvous with the Brain Bug, and see what hilarity ensues. But it’s near a suburb at the moment, so it’s likely to find a corpse long before we can get one to it. Assuming it goes after corpses and not living people.”

“Are there any colonies in Montana?” I ask.

“A few,” says Miriam, “but the Bug is heading away from them, south, toward Yellowstone. The closest encampment anywhere near its current trajectory is near Idaho Falls, about 300 miles away.”

“Are we in communication with them?”

“Yes. We sent a drone to them from the ATV in Montana with instructions on how to contact us. They know about the walkers, and our encounter with the last one, but they haven’t decided what to do about it.”

We’re all silent for an indeterminate amount of time - it feels like about a minute - staring at the gaping maw of the bug that knocked Draco Malfly out of the air. That fucking pirana-shark-wood shredder hybrid could tear you shreds in seconds. It’s starkly terrifying. What would it feel like to die that way? Unimaginable. 

Finally, I snap out of it and shut Miriam’s laptop, hard.

“Hey, watch it,” says Miriam. “That’s a $5,000 piece of hardware. Hard to find replacement parts. Also, thanks, I was starting to go all tharn.”

“Me, too,” I say. Anais nods. We were all frozen, deer in headlights, thinking that image might one day be the last thing we ever see.

“So what do we tell people?” I say. “They’re waiting on your report.”

Miriam sighs. “I want to give it another 24 hours. The worker bugs seem to be slowing down in the absence of the Brain Bug. Let’s give them a little more time to just fucking die - that’ll be hopeful. We probably can’t wait until we observe the Brain Bug taking over another body - living or not. We’ll just say we’re tracking it and will give updates. What else can we say?”

“We can emphasize that there are now officially no more walkers,” says Anais. “That’s comforting.”

“Yeah. I guess it is,” says Miriam. “Susmita, send out an APB that we’ll be presenting our findings tomorrow night at 8 pm. We can start composing the report tomorrow morning. For now, I want to watch a few Disney movies or something. Anything to get that image out of my head.”

I couldn’t agree more, but, spoiler alert, it didn’t work. We all slept fitfully, through nightmares of being shredded alive.


	5. Fear and Loving in Seymour's Bay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a not very effective play on the title of Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
> 
> This is the worst part - the calm before all hell breaks loose.
> 
> Well, actually, all hell breaking loose is going to be even worse. So scratch that.

JODI

I’m good at being terrified. For most of my life, it was an irrational, psychotic fear of germs. I’m over that now, but I think my brain may be addicted to the adrenaline rush because the whole zombie-bug thing has me even more frightened than is called for. 

Don’t get me wrong, everyone I know - anyone with any sense - is scared shitless. But everyone else can go about their business despite their fear. Me, I’m paralyzed, a deer in the headlights, 24-7.

I sit all day in the top floor bedroom, staring at nothing, mind reeling with terror, imagining horrific death by alien centipede. Extremities shredded, screaming, hemorrhaging blood, praying for death to end my agony. 

My friends have to bring me my meals. When they do, at least I can feed myself, but that’s about it. I have company - I’m on suicide watch, never alone. And good thing - left alone, I’d probably slit my own throat rather than face my deepest fear.

This can’t go on. I feel terrible for so inconveniencing my family, neglecting my responsibilities. They can cope - why can’t I?

  
  


TINA

The Belcher clan - plus Calvin and Andrea - are having a meeting, our first Family Meeting in over three years. There’s no particular agenda; we’re just there to support each other, to talk back and forth in the hope that one of us will say something effectively comforting in the face of our stark terror.

There _is_ a certain comfort just in being together as a family. Bob and Linda’s de facto divorce notwithstanding, we will always be Belchers. All of us - even my parents’ new paramours, though that has taken some getting used to. They’re good people. Calvin’s presence still feels odd, despite our lovely six-month fling. 

He’s holding my hand now, as we sit at the large dining room table my folks took from Mort’s apartment a couple years ago. Calvin is at one end, and Mom and I are to his left and right respectively. Mom seems mildly uncomfortable at this display of affection, but she’s dealing with it.

Sober Mom - a person I’ve only known for a couple of years - is less of an oddball, which is bittersweet to me, but more perceptive, more self-aware. God love her, she’s been working the 12 Steps and has developed a kind of lucidity unique to addicts who have sobered up. Our relationship has completely healed, and we’re better friends than we’ve ever been. 

Dad made omelets, and they’re fantastic. That alone is comforting. We’re all attempting to savor them rather than wolf them down, and mostly failing. But there’s more where they come from - poultry farming being the main source of protein in the Seymour’s Bay diet, the town is awash in eggs and chicken. 

“Bob, I regret dismissing your cooking for so many years. You are a true artist,” says Calvin. 

“Bobby and I had our problems,” says Mom. “but I always believed in his cooking. I still love you, Bobby. You know that, right?” She gives his hand a squeeze.

“I love you too, Lin. And I’m proud of you,” says Dad.

Wow. 

Neither Calvin nor Andrea seem upset by this expression of love between their respective lovers. In fact, they beam at them, clearly moved by their display affection. Damned if this isn’t a better world than the one we lost. This is how it should be.

Louise, Gene, and I exchange sad smiles, happy that our parents are happy, but wistful for the old days when they were a couple, when the knowledge that they always would be tethered us to each other and the world. 

_It’s called fate,_ I once said and believed, _and it’s great_.

[Pause for Reality-Check Moment]

“So,” says Dad, “how’s your little group marriage thing going?” Pre-plague dad would have freaked out at the thought of his daughter being involved in a polygamous marriage but has long since adjusted to the new normal. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that he and Andrea have an open relationship to allow for, among other things, Dad’s bisexuality. He has never openly discussed his sexuality, but Gene tells me that Dad confided in him when he came out.

“It’s great, but I’m worried about Jodi. She’s almost catatonic with fear. Which is only a little more than the rest of us, but enough that she can’t function.”

“Is she safe?” asks Mom.

“We’ve got her on 24-7 suicide watch. She’s never alone. I think she’ll snap out of it eventually, but at the moment, I haven’t seen any change. But we’ll get her through it.”

“I’ll take a shift,” says Louise.

“Me too,” says Gene. “Maybe a change of companions will get her attention.”

“Please do,” I say. “It’s getting a little stressful for the rest of us.”

“How about you, Gene?” says Dad. “How’s the family?”

“Couldn’t be better. Well, I mean, we could be not be spending every waking moment in complete terror, plus nightmares, but otherwise, we’re great. You’d think we’d be getting on each other’s nerves, with everyone home all the time, but with the terror thing, we really don’t have any remaining nerves available for each other to get on, if that makes any sense.”

“Plus,” says Louise, with devilish expression, “there’s always sex to take your mind off things. Lots and lots of sex.”

Louise is disappointed when this doesn’t get a rise out of Mom or even Dad, who says “Amen to that.”

Well, I suppose he would say that - Andrea is insanely gorgeous. Most of the time they’re together, he can barely take his eyes off her. 

“You know what,” says Mom, “we should have a get together of all the parents of our kids’ families. I know a lot of them are gone, but there’s a bunch still left. Who’s left?”

“Well,” I say, “Susmita’s dad is still alive, but that’s it for our household, except for me. Your roomies fared better, right Gene?”

“Not really. Jocelyn’s mom is alive, but that’s it. Except for me and Louise, of course.”

“And I don’t think you really want to introduce Jocelyn’s mom to Susmita’s dad,” says Louise. “He’s a genius, and she’s...um, not. In fact, it’s amazing she can even dress herself. Or remember to breathe, for that matter.”

“Wow,” says Andrea. “That is so fucking depressing - the death toll, I mean. I wonder how many people ore even left on the planet.”

“Best not to ruminate on that, I think,” says Calvin. “It’s difficult enough staying optimistic in the face of the bug threat.”

“You’re optimistic?” says Andrea. “I’m impressed.”

“Denial,” says Calvin, “is a powerful thing.”

We all finish our omelets in silence, doing the opposite of what Calvin recommended. 

Finally, Gene interrupts our sad reverie with “I don’t know about optimism, but there’s always hope, right? However faint. Right?”

Good dismount, bad landing.

  
  


RUDY

I feel so bad for Jodi. I’ve never seen anyone so miserable with fear, even during the plague. Her capacity for stark terror is actually kind of impressive. She’s so intense. 

I’m really frightened for her.

I want to help, but for some reason, she doesn’t want to see me. All of her housemates are welcome on her suicide watch, and Gene and Louise, but not me. I hate not being able to help, and - to be disgustingly selfish for a moment, I hate that her freak out has put our relationship on indefinite hiatus, as well as preoccupying Louise, to the point that she’s unavailable. 

I haven’t been this lonely or horny in almost four years. Granted, I’m extremely lucky that way - I’ve had an amazing relationship with Louise all that time, and Jodi is wonderful. I just needed to get that off my chest. Forgive me. I really am mostly just worried and scared for Jodi. 

For some reason, I’m not that scared of the whole bug thing. There haven’t been any sightings outside Montana - unless you count “Andy’s” story, which is obviously not reliable. 

It’s still really weird, this whole thing with Ollie. I’ve gotten used to addressing them both most of the time, and even Andy individually if Ollie says that’s who I’m talking to. I wish I could believe it, but there’s no way. I buried Andy myself, and there’s no such thing as ghosts. 

There is one bit of good news around here these days: Millie is getting better. With Jessica’s help, drawing on what she absorbed from her osteopath parents, Millie's bones are slowly, painfully, but inexorably realigning. At the current rate, it will be years before she’s completely healed, if that’s even possible, but it’s happening. Even the left half of her face, which was frozen in a grimace, is starting to show improvement.

Danny is over the moon, though the fact that the process is keeping Millie in constant pain, worse than she already was, is clearly wearing on him. Millie assures him - assures all of us - that she’s willing to endure it to have her body back, no matter how long it takes. It may be self-interest, but it’s incredibly brave, and I’ve come to see her as profoundly beautiful. I envy Danny a bit. Millie’s body is twisted, but her spirit is magnificent. I actually find myself fantasizing about her.

Well, in my current state of deprivation, I’m fantasizing about a lot of women, even Tina, which feels weird - I’ve always thought of her as kind of off-limits, even just in my mind. Maybe something’s wrong with me - it’s only been a week, and I’m already desperate. Or is that normal at my age? I’m seventeen, almost eighteen. I think I’m supposed to be horny AF. 

I get the impression that Tina’s entire household is in a state of celibacy pending Jodi’s recovery. She’s the undisputed head of the household, even though she’s the youngest, and everything is on hold until she comes back online. Once she does, it’s going to be party central over there.

Ugh. I’ve got to get off the subject of sex. I’m going nuts here. 

Jesus, two double entendres in a row. That’s four entendres. 

Fuck it. I can’t stand it anymore. I’m taking matters into my own hands.

Six entendres.


	6. Dead Man Walking

LOUISE

“Hey, kiddo - how ya doin’?”

Jodi’s only response is a wan smile - a barely visible twitch of the lips. But it’s progress. Yesterday, she rocked back and forth on the bed, grimacing, for most of the hour we spent together.

“I brought brownies.  _ Special _ brownies.” I’d baked in some of Calvin Fischoeder’s private, Marley-plant-descended stash, courtesy of Mom.

Again, no response save for a facial tick, this one unhappy.

“Come on. It’s good for what ails you,” I say.

To my surprise, she responds in full sentences. “That stuff makes me paranoid,” she says, in a thin, mousy voice like the one she outgrew years ago. “I’m already twenty percent more paranoid than mathematically possible.”

“Oh,” I say, deflated. “Right. Sorry.”

I sit next to her on the bed. She smells bad - she hasn’t showered or changed her clothes in a week. I hate seeing - and smelling - her like this. Her transformation from timid, germophobic child to commanding presence and head-of-household was inspiring. Now she’s more than regressed. 

“Well, if you don’t want any,” I say, “I’ll just have to share them with someone else.”

On cue, Rudy enters, to Jodi’s shock. “I said I didn’t want to see you!”

“I know you guys didn’t have a falling out,” I say. “I think you just don’t want him to see you like this.”

“Who cares! I said ‘no Rudy,’ and I meant it.”

“Sorry,” says Rude, “Doctor’s orders.”

Actually, they were  _ my _ orders, which are more binding (to Rudy) than a doctor’s. I make room on the bed, and he sidles up next to her. Her arms are folded against her chest and she has started to rock back and forth again. Rudy embraces her from behind and rocks with her.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says. “You can handle this. You’re tough, and you’re smart.”

“Smart, yes,” she says. “Tough, not so much.”

“Oh, I think you’re tough. And I think you’d agree, as the man married to Louise Belcher, I have an intimate familiarity with tough.”

Jodi actually chuckles at that. A good sign.

“You know how tough you are? You’re so tough that you’re going to accept my challenge.”

“Challenge?”

“Yes. I hereby challenge you to a shower. With me. I challenge you to let me clean you tenderly but vigorously. And if it segues into lovemaking,” he adds, dramatically, “then so be it.”

Jodi turns and stares at him for a long moment, then something... shifts. I can see her re-inhabit her body, and notice that it is in bad shape. “Oh, God, how can you stand to be this close to me?”

“It’s allergy season.” Rudy winks. “I can’t smell anything.”

“Well, then,” says Jodi, regaining her regal bearing, “you may escort me to the shower. After which, you will, of course, fuck my brains out.”

Rudy, not used to taking commands from Jodi, is momentarily taken aback. He looks to me for permission to treat Jodi as his side-mistress, and I nod. He takes Jodi’s hand and helps her rise from the bed - she’s a little shaky.

Physically. Otherwise, she’s in command. “Seriously,” she says. “All the way out. I want the mattress to be stained with gray matter.”

“Ha!” I exclaim. I’ve never heard anyone take that particular metaphor to its literal conclusion.

“Yeah,” says Rudy. “Funny. Gross, but funny. I’ll do my best. But, I mean, it could be stuck in there with glue or something.”

As I hear the shower start up, I take my leave, to give them some privacy. Maybe someday Rudy and I will do that kinky thing where one of us watches, but not today. OK, it’s not exactly that high on the kinkometer, but we’re pretty basic when it comes to sex. And I have to admit that it would be cool to watch Rudy in action.  _ Being _ watched feels a little dicey to me; but maybe if Rudy goes first...

I try to keep my cool as I head back to Ocean Drive, but I wind up sprinting most of the way. Jodi may have been over-reacting, but not by much. 

I’m scared out of my fucking mind.

  
  


JESSICA

Osteopaths don’t get much respect. 

The medical establishment thought they were quacks. And to be fair, some of the principles of the discipline are about as legit as homeopathy. Even my parents, both osteopaths themselves, admitted as much. 

“The core principles of the trade are gobbledygook,” my mom once told me. “Not all human ailments originate in the musculoskeletal system. Ridiculous. But it’s like chiropractic medicine or acupuncture: the therapies work because they tap into the structure of the human nervous system. As long as you know your traditional medicine, and  _ really _ understand the nervous system, you can heal people.”

She told me all this when I was 8. She and Dad definitely hoped I’d follow in their footsteps; but rather than familiarize me with the details of their specialty, they encouraged me to study medicine (at an introductory level) and anatomy, particularly the anatomy of the nervous system.

As a result, by the time of my Bat Mitzvah (mom was Jewish, and dad didn’t care enough to assert his Catholicism), I knew as much about the human body as, say, a first-year medical student - more, in a few areas.

None of which makes me qualified to rehabilitate Millie. But I’m the most qualified person on the East Coast, and I consult with a guy in New Mexico who was an orthopedic surgeon before the plague. Even if he were local, he couldn’t perform surgery - he developed a tremor that put him out of business about six months before the plague hit - but when we get to the point where surgery is necessary to complete Millie’s rehab, he’s going to talk me through it. 

If I were Millie, I’d be terrified.

Frankly, she should already be scared out of her mind. At some point in the foreseeable future, we may all have to run for our lives, and she  _ can’t run. _ The fact that she doesn’t seem even a little bit worried about the bugs suggests to me that she may not have been driven  _ completely _ sane when she became a crawler, as she asserts.

Maybe she assumes Daniel will save her from a bug or zombie attack. The guy is a beast - 6’4”, in perfect physical condition, powerfully built. He could probably jump over a raging zombie while carrying Millie in his arms. And God knows he’d die to save her. But she probably doesn’t think about that.

I know I’m being overly egotistical about this, but Millie is my masterpiece. When she got here, she could barely move unassisted. Now she’s getting around, albeit painfully, with a cane. Through physical therapy and some of the specialized techniques I picked up from my folks, her limbs have straightened out significantly. She can do most of the relatively sedentary things that anyone else can do, which is enormous progress. 

Here’s the thing, though: to get her to the point of full independence, to fix the worst underlying damage to her poor frame, surgery is absolutely necessary. I won’t have to do it alone - Dr. Shin will, in fact, be the lead surgeon on the multiple required procedures. But she’s not a surgeon by training. 

She’s removed some appendixes and gall bladders, picking up the techniques from books. But orthopedic surgery involves more than cutting someone open and removing a piece of them. We’re going to be doing actual reconstruction. We’re studying our asses off to prepare, and we’ll practice on cadavers if there are any local deaths in the runup to the surgery. And of course, we’ll have Dr. Chase in New Mexico to guide us through it.

But if we screw anything up, it could be disastrous. It could leave Millie completely crippled in new and unpleasant ways, all progress lost. We’re talking about detaching and re-attaching tendons; breaking badly healed bones and reshaping them; removing muscle tissue that physical therapy can’t heal and hoping that it regrows in the proper shape around re-positioned tendons and re-shaped bones. 

A single error working on her arm and one of Millie’s hands could become completely useless. We risk turning her into a rag doll if we mess up the work on her tendons or adding massively to her chronic pain if we make an error re-shaping her bones.

Millie seems unsettlingly sanguine about the whole thing. “There’s nothing you can do to me that will be worse than turning into a crawler. I was crawling around on snapped bones in my arms and legs, and I couldn’t even scream. My heart was racing, probably 200 beats a minute, for days. My head was in even more pain than the rest of my body, like five times as bad as the worst migraine you’ve ever had, plus, you know, utter existential horror, every unbearable moment.

“If you try and fail, it’s still a big ‘fuck you’ to the virus, or whatever it was. Hell, the fact that I’m alive at all, and the fact that you’ve healed me so much is an even bigger ‘fuck you.’ I’ve already proved conclusively that I can survive anything. Cut me up and tape me back together again. Whatever happens, I can deal with it.”

I hug her gingerly. She hugs me back powerfully enough that I’m sure it’s hurting her badly to do it.

We’re sitting outside Chez (Gene) Belcher on lawn chairs, at Millie’s insistence. There are no other signs of life on Ocean Avenue - everyone else is inside, cowering, to one extent or another, from alien bugs that may not exist outside of Montana. It’s a gorgeous, cool fall day, perfect blue sky, light breeze. In the distance, toward the Wharf, I can see a couple of dragonfly-bots zipping around. It’s probably Buzz and Whoosh - they seem to enjoy negotiating the stronger breezes off the ocean. 

Gene told me about his conversation with Buzz about robot sentience. It scared me a bit, but watching the flying bots having fun - however they experience it - it all seems less threatening. 

On the other hand, the threat of the bugs has me all twitchy. Millie notices. “We can go back inside if you like. I think I’ve gotten enough air.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, though I’m already standing and offering my hand to help her up.

“Yeah. There’s only so much fresh air a person can take.”

  
  


COURTNEY

Winter has come early to Seymour’s Bay. It’s November 6, and we just got nine inches of snow overnight. Insert Philip Fry meme saying “Not sure if climate change... or just climate change.” This summer was brutal, and if the last few years are any indication, this winter will be, too. 

Most people I know don’t like winter. Not anymore. Not when everyone in the Northeast saw their first armies of crawlers moving slowly through six or more inches of snow in late November four years ago. On the other hand, the snow makes lousy camouflage for any jet-black alien centipedes that might turn up. I suppose that should be reassuring, but every time I look out across the snow-covered landscape and see anything moving in the distance, my heart skips a beat. 

It’s hard to believe we’re approaching 2029. Most older folks I know tell me they stopped being able to deal with what year it was in 2000. Boomers and Gen-Xers grew up reading science fiction set in the 1990s. I was born in the late 00s - the oughts, as almost no one calls them - but 2029 still sounds like science fiction. Living through the Post-Apocalypse certainly adds to that impression.

Winters also feel weird now because there’s no holiday season. I mean, a few people still celebrate Thanksgiving out of habit (or obsession, in the case of Bob Belcher), and a few more celebrate Christmas, mostly out of a desperate sense of tradition. Or just desperation.

But there’s no Halloween, and no seasonal decorations - save for the homes of a few hard-core individuals, mostly older folks. I think I feel worse for them than for the vast majority of us who have concluded that there’s not much to be thankful for, and probably no God).

I’m kind of surprised that so many people have given up on the God thing. Historically, my species belief in gods and the supernatural has been even more tenacious than our survival instinct - let’s face it, most of the behavior people exhibited in the name of religion was directly contrary to our herd-animal nature. 

But then again, everything we’ve seen... how can you believe in the loving God most of my fellow humans claimed to worship? 

I wasn’t raised religious. My parents were too self-involved to give up their Sunday mornings to the activity of worship, or even to instill in me any formal moral structure. I don’t know if they believed in God or not, but if they did, they never talked about it, and certainly didn’t do anything about it.

Despite that lack of moral guidance, I think I’ve always been a moral person. Maybe not by traditional standards, but in the Golden Rule sense. Which, again, is just an outgrowth of being herd animals. You don’t need a god or religion to tell you what’s right or wrong. All it takes is compassion. Compassion is my religion, and I’m proud to say that it is the majority religion among the post-apocalypse population, at least based on my anecdotal evidence. 

What else, really, is left to believe in? 

The world is still, and silent save for the faint sound of Teddy’s snowplow about a mile away. Everyone is gathered in the living room, strangely subdued, staring at the fire in the fireplace. I think it may be some weird moment of silence for the last known artificial fire log (RIP Duraflame).

We get that way sometimes, quietly mourning the last of a commodity from the old world. The last can of baked beans, the last non-rechargeable AA battery, the last unexpired container of powdered milk. The last unexpired anything. 

But no one looks sad, exactly - I think it’s just the quiet. A thick blanket of snow muffles most ambient sounds, and these days there’s no rumble of traffic or other mass activities to silence in the first place. Other than that faint scraping sound, the crackle of the Duraflame “log,” and our breathing, the world is completely silent. 

Standing in the entrance to the living room, I survey my housemates. Gene and Mel curled up in the love seat, Jess and Jocelyn similarly entwined on the couch. Next to them is Daniel, with Millie sitting blissfully on his lap. On the floor, between the coffee table and the fireplace are Louise, Rudy, and a guest, Jodi, Louise cuddling Rudy’s right half and Jodi his left. Rudy is in heaven.

There’s no room on the other side of Gene, so I simply squeeze in next to Mel. She gives me a peck on the cheek. Gene kisses her, while simultaneously lifting her bodily and scooching to the middle of the love seat, next to me. He places Mel down on his other side, releases his lock on her lips, and kisses me passionately.

He’s in heaven, too.

I haven’t felt this good, this content, since before the plague. Maybe not even then. I’m  _ home _ , I’m with my family of choice, it’s a beautiful, if early, winter’s day, the last of the Duraflames is crackling convincingly in the fireplace. 

I’m not even experiencing survivor’s guilt. It’s the most perfect moment of my life.

So, naturally, it’s about 20 seconds before the silence outside is broken by a high pitched, horror movie-worthy scream. 

We all rush to the windows, but whatever’s happening, it’s not happening on Ocean Drive.

_ It’s probably something normal,  _ I try to reassure myself as we all rush down the stairs and out the door.  _ There’s been an accident. Or someone just found the body of someone who died of natural causes and they freaked out. Maybe it was a suicide - that might elicit a scream from someone.  _

But as the cold air hits me, the woman who screamed manages to use her words.

In the distance, but very clearly, we hear her frantically yelling “Zombie! Zombie in the park!”

_ “...with George,” I think, hysterically. Followed by “I thought you’d want to know. [faint].” Followed by (sung) “Zo-om-bie, in the park, I think it was the fourth of July.” _

Good. I’m going insane. And not a moment too soon.

One final, insane thought, as I run back inside:  _ [prison guard]: Dead man walking! _


	7. Weapon of Choice

SUSMITA

“Howard,” says Miriam, “can you track the walker back to its origin?”

“Already working on it. The tracks in the snow are helping,” says Howard. 

Miriam, Anais and I are hunched over our respective laptops. We switch to Howard’s feed just as his efforts are thwarted. “Crap,” he says. “The tracks lead into the woods. I’ll pull back. Maybe I can see where it entered, assuming it didn’t originate there.”

“I’m kind of hoping it leads right into a graveyard. That would at least it would tell us something.”

“So would a pool of blood,” says Anais.

Then Miriam rains on our grim parade: “There’s no reason they couldn’t go after both corpses and live humans.”

“Well,” I say, “that thought just made my day. Incidentally, what’s our plan for actually dealing with this thing? The cold and snow are slowing it down, but at its current pace, it’ll be on Main Street in less than 20 minutes.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered,” says Anais. “We’re going with what we know works, and I planned ahead for this occasion. I’ve got a container of liquid nitrogen attached to a dirigible drone. We’re gonna freeze the fucker.”

Oh, thank God.

“But you’re right,” she continues. “We need to send it over now. Sus, keep monitoring Howard’s 

Feed; Miriam, send Buzz and Miss Manners Mark II to rendezvous with the walker and monitor their feeds. I’ll let the drone out and pilot it from my laptop.”

Miriam and I exchange a glance. Stepping up to take command is not usually in Anais’ nature. She generally gets her instructions from Miriam, and sometimes even defers to me. But I guess this is her gig -- the task is all about the hardware.

She dashes off to the detached garage - her laboratory - to release the drone. Miriam sends instructions to Buzz and Miss Manners II, and their feeds appear on her laptop screen (Buzz) and a second monitor behind it (Miss M). I keep my eye on Howard’s satellite feed.

Miss M’s pace is brisk, much faster than her original avatar’s top speed; but Buzz’s feed is a blur. He got his upgrade, and then some, and is cruising along at about 45 miles per hour. He turns, putting the wind at his back, and hits 50.

The view from Howard’s feed has pulled back considerably. Now the large wooded area adjacent to the park is visible in its entirety. Just as my attention turns back to the feed, Howard says “got it.” The walker had entered the woods from the north, then at some point turned east.

Howard zooms in again to follow the tracks. I become alarmed as the trail gets fainter, filled in with early morning snow, then even more alarmed when we come to the end of the line - a huge red stain in the snow, surrounded by smaller stains.

“Damn damn damn,” says Howard. I hear him let out a sob - more of a gasp - then he gathers himself. “It’s obvious what happened: A living person was attacked by, presumably, a brain bug, ran around, flailing, trying to remove it from wherever it had latched on to, and finally collapsed and bled out as it burrowed into them. 

“And it happened recently - this morning, considering that the blood didn’t get covered by your morning snowfall, which means that the brain bug either births or attracts worker bugs pretty much instantly. I don’t see anything that looks like bug tracks approaching the bloodstains, so I’m thinking the brain bug produces a brood as soon as it’s at home in the victim’s skull. Oh, man.”

This is bad.

Miriam has heard Howards running commentary, but she has not glanced at my screen. Instead, she stares intensely at Buzz’s feed, tears running down her cheeks in a torrent.

The victim is a little girl, maybe 10 or eleven years old.  _ No wonder it got moving so fast, _ I think - logical analysis kicking in to delay any emotional reaction -  _ The girl’s frame is maybe half the size of a full-grown adult’s, requiring fewer, and presumably younger, smaller worker bugs -  _ a supposition confirmed by a close look at the victim’s entire form.

Unlike the walkers we observed in Montana, this is a fresh kill, most of her flesh still in place, nothing rotted. The worker bugs’ black carapaces are largely covered in crimson blood, some of it still dripping. 

But I take all that in with a quick glance. It’s the poor girl’s face I can’t turn away from. One side of her jaw - presumably where the bug entered her skull - is gone, but the rest of her features are intact. This was a person a few hours ago.

Worse, I recognize her. She is - was - Molly Schindler, an odd kid who, despite her youth, lived on her own in a large house on the edge of the populated section of town and had few friends - despite being well-liked. A prodigy computer programmer, she preferred being alone with her machines to human companionship most of the time. Miriam and I tried a number of times to take her into our fold, add her to our team, but she always resisted.

She must have gone for an early morning walk, as was her habit, despite the snow and the threat of, well, exactly what happened. 

I have to focus. That abomination isn’t Molly anymore, and it has to die.

Anais slides back into her seat and brings up her piloting software. She enters the walker’s coordinates, sets a cruising altitude of about 30 feet, and clicks the “Start” button on her software.

The screen now divides into for sections, each displaying the feed from a different camera on the drone: Front and straight forward; front and down at about a 45-degree angle, rear, and straight down.

The dirigible moves painfully slowly, its speed and maneuverability severely limited by its heavy cargo - a thickly-insulated cylindrical container of liquid nitrogen, full to its two-gallon capacity. With any luck, that will be enough to freeze the thing solid. If it does, Miss Manners will hurl a heavy projectile at the thing and see if it shatters. If it doesn’t do enough damage, we figure we’ll head to the park with bowling balls and finish the job.

Well, that’s one possible course of action. The other is that we load the frozen walker into an ATV and see what happens when it thaws. With any luck, the bugs will be dead but intact, and we can study them up close. OK, not “we” - we’re hoping to find a local zoologist with no fear of death to do the job. Barring that, Anais plans to don a protective suit made of her strongest (and most flexible) alloy and disassemble the fuckers herself.

I kind of hope we go with option one. Now that we know that the bugs are highly vulnerable to cold, and we’ve found a functional liquid air factory in Egg Harbor, I think we should skip the scientific inquiry, manufacture a ton of flamethrower-style liquid air guns, and arm every man, woman, child and fetus to the teeth.

Better yet - or, ideally, at the same time - create an army of liquid-air-thrower-armed robots to engage any walkers first. 

We’re starting with the dirigible because we’re reasonably sure the large bug in the skull cavity is the, well, brains of the outfit, and we want to see if freezing it first neutralizes the worker bugs. If so, we’ll concentrate on finding ways to exploit that vulnerability.

The walker has stopped moving - like the one in Montana, it seems sensitive to the presence of the robots. As soon as they get within about three feet, the thing turns into a statue. A statue covered with hundreds of twitching, black, blood-covered, insectoid sinews. And atop that atrocity, the defiled head and face of a brilliant little girl, what’s left of her jaw agape, her dead eyes staring at absolutely nothing. The most appalling memento mori ever.

TINA

Mac holds me as we watch Susmita’s laptop screen over her shoulder. Grant, Dean, and Jodi huddle together, watching Miriam and Anais’ screens. Oddly, it is Jodi doing the comforting in their little group. The twins are on the edge of breaking down, but she is rock steady, perhaps because reality, as awful as it is, is not nearly as horrible as the paralyzing scenarios she had built up in her mind. It’s just one former little girl, and Anais’ drone was going to destroy it with liquid nitrogen.

The twins, on the other hand, are shuddering in her tiny embrace. I still can’t get over it - they’ve always been a source of strength to me, safety personified. I guess they’ve been in denial about the walker situation, and now they’re faced with the reality of it, and they’re losing it. My poor cuddle bears.

For some reason, all I can think about is Zeke. 

I think it’s because of that sinking feeling. It’s usually a momentary, if awful, sensation. But I’m living inside it, and it isn’t going away. I feel like an astronaut in free fall, except I’m outside the ship, on spacewalk, and fatally off course, wondering if I’ll run out of oxygen before I burn up in the atmosphere.

What must Zeke have felt when, ten minutes outside Seymour’s Bay, he caught a glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror, and knew it was all over?

So close. So fucking close. Almost home, and he had a day to live. Did he almost hope that I hadn’t survived, that he wouldn’t have to face me, wouldn’t have to put me through what he was going through as he drove the last few miles home? He knew just what would, and ultimately did happen: I’d open the door, be thrilled beyond belief that he had returned, then I’d see his eyes...

That sinking feeling. 

He’d carried me upstairs to my room and laid me down on the bed as I wept hysterically. 

“It’s OK, baby. It’s OK,” he murmured as he sat by my bedside. As if  _ I _ were the terminal patient. “Ain’t nothing that hasn’t happened to seven billion other people. I know it’s hard, but you can handle this.”

I grabbed one of my pillows and beat him mercilessly with it. “Handle it?!”  _ Whomp! _ “Handle it?!”  _ Whomp! _ “Fuck you!”  _ Whomp!I Whomp Whomp Whomp! _

And he laughed. God damn him, he laughed. “Damn, girl, you’d beat a dying man senseless with memory foam?”

I threw the heavy pillow across the room. It hit the top of my dresser and destroyed about ten porcelain, glass, and plastic horses. My monument to the most dearly departed of all the extinct mammals.

“You can’t just show up here in time to die. You can’t do this to me. You just can’t Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh...”

That took the wind out of his sails, and now I felt even worse. He’d been coping with his imminent demise, and now he was in tears.

“I’m sorry, girl,” he said. “I almost didn’t. I saw my eyes and thought about eatin’ my gun. Savin’ you all this.”

He was dying, and I’d behaved like a petulant child when I should have been comforting him. And he was apologizing to me. I didn’t think I could feel lower than I already did. But I managed. Yay, me.

“Zeke, please, you don’t have to...”

“I had to say goodbye. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t just end it all, not yet. Honestly, I just didn’t want to be another body behind the wheel on the shoulder on the interstate. I had to see you again. I decided it was my dying wish.”

I sat up and embraced him with all the strength I could muster. “It’s not fair!” I wailed. “It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair!”

“No, girl, it ain’t, but that’s life, right?” he said. He was still trying to comfort me, but his voice was shaky. He wept on my shoulder. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll get it together, just a sec.”

That was enough. I had to be there for him. I had to grow up and comfort my dying boyfriend. It had been too late with Jimmy Jr., but Zeke was here, and still himself. I had to do this. “Jesus, Zeke,” I said, “cry all you want. You’re allowed.” 

And I demonstrated, giving him a master class in mourning. He was an apt pupil. I don’t know how long we spent clinging to each other, howling at the universe for its cold indifference. But when it was done, it was done. We’d cried it out. We were steady, and prepared to see this through to the end. 

We walked to the beach. It was about 8 am, and the sun was dazzling, seen through a thin layer of clouds, turning the sky yellow, orange, red, and every color in between. Shafts of light shone through, as if beckoning Zeke to heaven.

A few years later, I would hear Tess sing this moment to me 

_ These are the clouds of Michelangelo _

_ Muscular with gods and Sungold _

_ Shine on your witness... _

It was from Joni Mitchell’s “Refuge of the Roads,” and hearing her work turned my mind inside out, reminding me again that I had missed so much great music in my obsession with boy bands.

But just then, I didn’t have words to describe what I was seeing, or for the cruel irony of experiencing this beauty as my boyfriend, my best friend, prepared to die.

Zeke planted himself in a comfortable position in the sand, having found the best vantage point from which to observe the light show nature was putting on just for him. I sat next to him, trying to take it all in with the same equanimity, and almost managing.

“You know,” he said, “I never really appreciated stuff like this. I don’t know how many sunrises and sunsets washed over me without making an impression. Well, at least this is a real good one.”

I was silent, afraid that if I spoke, everything I was feeling would rush out in a torrent.

“I mean, I always liked walkin’ in the woods and stuff. I used to shoot squirrels with a BB gun, but I feel terrible about it now. It’s not like I was takin’ em home and fryin’ them up. I just did it for no fuckin’ reason, except maybe that it was the one thing my dad taught me how to do before he split. But I didn’t feel a damn thing for the squirrels; I was just proud when I made a clean kill.

“Man, I’m such white trash. Do ya think we could have made it together? That I was good enough for you? No, don’t answer that. It’s an unfair question, under the circumstances. 

“But you made me a better person, you know that? I think I might just have been husband material one day.”

What was he trying to do, kill me? I had to redirect him before I completely lost it.

“Zeke, don’t talk about what might have been. Tell me about you. Anything you ever wanted to tell me. Anything you want to remind yourself. Just tell me.”

Zeke gazed out at the sea for I don’t know how long. A long time, minutes maybe. In retrospect, I know he was reviewing his life in his head, preparing to tell me his story.

Which, dammit, I still can’t recall in any detail. I’ve tried a hundred times to reconstruct it in my head, but I just couldn’t focus on it at the time. All I could do was listen to the sound of his voice. The words were beside the point. I was interested in his past, but at the time more determined to memorize him. His voice, his face, his form. In a few hours, he’d be another body in the mass grave in the Wagstaff playground. In, what, a year, he’d be a pile of bones. Someone needed to keep him in their mind in high resolution. I scanned him like one of those machines that turns objects into 3D models. I encoded the timbre of his voice in different registers, his speech patterns, his accent. 

I studied his body wistfully. Tragically. I had wanted to see so much more of it, to do so many things to it, and let it do so many things to me. But he had kindly refused my offer of my own body (soul included). It would just be too much.

Better to do just this. To let his life flash before him slowly, in great detail, with time to reflect.

All the while, he was calm, resigned to his fate, somehow almost enjoying the moment. Most people spend seven or eight decades wondering when the end will come, and how. Zeke knew - how lucky was that? He’d meet the moment with dignity and composure. 

And without much pain. Having seen the change in his eyes, he’d taken a detour to the local hospital and, braving what must have been a mind-mangling trip through corridors filled with twisted dead bodies, found a cache of morphine and loaded up a 200 unit syringe with it. As soon as the transition started, I would inject the entire contents. He’d be dead, painlessly, in a minute or less.

It was the least I could do, but God damn him for asking me to do it.

But you already know about all that. 

I wish I could tell you about his life. Maybe it will come back to me. But for now, I find myself living in that awful day, rather than this one, staring at Susmita’s monitor without seeing it.

“Hey, kiddo,” says Mac, “where are you? You okay?”

“Oh! Yeah, yes, I’m fine. I mean, as fine as possible under the circumstances. But yeah, I did kind of go away for a minute.”

“Closer to five. You were practically in REM sleep, given your breathing patterns. What were you dreaming about.”

Mac knows everything about me. No secrets. He’ll understand. “Zeke,” I said. “The day he came back.”   
  
Mac whistles. “What, this isn’t awful enough?”

“It was just an association that triggered a memory. I’m back now. What’s happening.”

What’s happening is this: Anais’ drone, with its extraordinary cold cargo, is hovering over the walker, which, like the one in Montana, has stopped moving in reaction to the proximity of Miss Manners and Buzz. Susmita’s screen has switched from the overhead view from Howard’s satellite to Buzz’s feed, Miriam is watching through Miss Manner’s camera, and Anais’ monitor is showing the view straight down from the drone. 

While the hope is that the liquid nitrogen will instantly and completely incapacitate the walker, there is still the possibility of a bug-splosion. Which would be bad. Really, really bad. The town has been alerted to the situation, and the Mayor has ordered everyone to stay in their homes. Incredibly, there are people gathered about 100 yards from the walker to watch what, if they’re lucky, will not be much of a spectacle. Others with a view of the park from their homes are, more understandably, monitoring the situation, some through binoculars.

“Ready, Buzz?” says Susmita.

“To go down in a hail of deadly alien bugs? Fuck no. But I’ll do it.”

“Um, thanks.”

“You owe me a robot bride, though, says Buzz. “One with a nice, sexy thorax.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” says Anais.

“Miss Manners,” says Miriam, “all systems nominal?”

“Why ask? You’re monitoring them yourself,” complains the bot.

Miriam sighs. “Just being polite.”

Anais doesn’t bother talking to her drone. Its AI is rudimentary. It is not sentient. “All systems go on the drone,” she says. “Let’s do this.”

Anais clicks a button on her screen, and from all three views, we see two gallons of liquid nitrogen hit the atmosphere and instantly vaporize. But it’s still much heavier than the air and has considerable downward momentum. It hits the walker’s head. And before its body disappears behind a wall of steaming nitrogen, we see the worker bugs go slack. When the steam has cleared, the dirigible drone’s camera reveals that the walker has fallen to the ground, through the brittle ice caused by the nitrogen cloud hitting it, and broken in half.

We all share a moment of silence for Molly Schindler, then let out whoops and hollers of triumph.

Except for Anais. She is guiding the drone down to a couple of feet above the broken walker. “Celebrate all you want,” she says, “but until we’re sure the bugs don’t come to when they thaw out, I’m not ready to party.”

She has a point. But fuck it, we’ve found our weapon of choice. Now it’s just a matter of making sure everyone in town - ideally everyone in the world - has a liquid-nitrogen-thrower and learns how to use it.

Which means getting that factory up and running.


	8. Burning-Viking-Ship-Sex. Also, Zombies.

_Seaside had not so much risen from the ashes of the old world as it had been occupied by survivors drawn west to the edge of what had been Western civilization, where they could look out upon the eternal sea and imagine that their species was not nearly extinct; that rapists, murderers, and brigands did not roam the wastelands to the east; that the world behind them was as unchanged as the ocean before them. Where, at least in one direction, all was as it had been._

_But the illusion could not be long sustained. Around the Botanical Gardens, where the Seaside inhabitants clustered, one thousand souls kept the place lively enough. But anywhere else in the Valley, the emptiness, the desertedness, was palpable._

_An ongoing effort was being made to gather up the ubiquitous bodies of plague victims and inter them in mass graves, but there were just too many, littered across more square miles than those with the stomach for the work could reasonably cover. Not when there was so much more important work to be done._

_So beyond Seaside, corpses littered the streets and lurked behind every window, and one simply could not become inured to that fact._

_David Pressman had witnessed as much death as anyone, perhaps more than most, as he had traveled across the entire continent to join the community in what had been San Francisco. He had passed untold thousands of dead bodies, fought and fled lawless psychopaths and somehow survived, standing by, hiding in the shadows as innocent men, women, and children he simply could not save were slaughtered. He had even killed - not only in self-defense, but in mercy, delivering a dozen people from the agonizing throes of the plague._

_The memories preoccupied him. The survivor’s guilt._

_They haunted him all the more as he strolled the idyllic circle around the Botanical Gardens, for he recognized the same dull ache in the eyes of those he passed or chatted with. The plague had not killed happiness, but it had contaminated it. Those who had endured the past two years rarely smiled with their eyes. Maybe the next generation, those who had not witnessed the end but only the new beginning, would be able to experience pure happiness._

_In the meantime, life was to be gotten on with. And if it was in some ways a grim slog, at least the sea and the grand old city provided an inspiring backdrop. It inspired art both beautiful and disturbing, songs mournful and hopeful, and performance art David didn’t really understand._

_Seaside was alive. It was a community. A society. And David Pressman - former accountant, not an artist, not skilled in any currently relevant profession - would protect it, even if it meant borrowing the brutal tactics of the murderous psychopaths he had encountered in his journey._

_He knew it might cost him his soul, but he was ready to make that sacrifice._

_Perhaps he already had._

_\-- from the Prologue to_ Motes in the Light _, Book One of the Longshore Trilogy by Denise Meyer_

  
  


TINA

The dirigible and the two bots have kept watch over the frozen walker all day. It’s about 60 degrees out there now, and the bugs look to be completely thawed out, and there hasn’t been any sign of movement. Not a twitch. 

I’d have voted for pulverizing them while they were still frozen solid, but of course, we need to know if they can survive the deep freeze. As the Magic Eight Ball says, signs point to “No.”

But it can’t be that easy.

Anais, who seems to almost enjoy, in her laconic way, being the bearer of bad news or undermining any glimmer of hope we experience, says “this is all well and good, but what we really need to know is how to eliminate the bugs entirely. We need a form of insecticide that works, and we need to blanket the landscape with it. And I don’t see us getting a clue how to do it without retrieving that body and studying the _probably_ dead bugs.”

We’re gathered in the living room, again in Last Supper tableau, and this stops all other conversations cold.

“Any volunteers?” she asks.

For thirty seconds the only sound - and I’m probably imagining it - is seven sets of eyes darting cagily back and forth, waiting to see who will rise to the challenge. 

Finally, Anais says “Fine. I guess it’s up to the scientists. Miriam, Sus, get a good night’s sleep tonight because tomorrow we’re going to dissect some bugs.”

Miriam sighs, resigned to her fate. Susmita, however, looks positively ill. I didn’t know people with her melanin level and tone could turn green.

“Hold on,” she says. “We’re computer scientists. We have no training in biology, much less exobiology. Dissecting one of those things could be interesting, but what the hell are we going to do with our observations?”

Good point.

Anais says “We have to start somewhere.”  
  


“Good,” says Susmita. “So let’s just start somewhere that could easily get us killed. Those fuckers could have acid for blood. They could be poisonous to the touch. _They could still be alive,_ just in a torpor, and they could suddenly get really annoyed if we start dissecting them.

“Goddammit, I’ve survived this long, I don’t want to fucking die _now_.”

“You’ve watched too many Ridley Scott movies,” says Miriam, nervous, probably trying to reassure herself as much as Susmita.

“We’re _living_ in a Ridley Scott production of a George Romero screenplay! And I am _not_ going to be “Bug Victim Number Three” in the end credits!”

Mac gives me a peck on the cheek and turns to Susmita. He takes her hand. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I’ll play Ersatz Exobiologist 3 if you want. I’m sure enough that those things are dead.”

“Hey,” I say, “don’t go volunteering for a suicide mission. I need you. Look, Anais, let’s just freeze the damn thing again and shatter it into a million billion pieces. If nothing else, we don’t want to work on a walker this close to town. I mean, just in case the bugs do wake up, let’s wait until we find one further away from civilization. Put some lab equipment in one of your ATVs and work on it in the field. If they wake up now, here, they’ll probably scatter, and we’ll have a major problem on our hands.”

Anais thinks about this for a while. I can see that she’s coming around to my point of view, but doesn’t like it.

“Ugh, alright,” she says, “I’ll send another drone and re-freeze it, then Miss Manners can fire projectiles at it until it’s powder. Then we figure out what to do with the remains. But at some point, someone’s going to have to get close to whatever’s left of the walker to dispose of it. Fuck it, I’ll do it. Join me, Miri?”

Another resigned sigh. “Sure. Think we can get our hands on some hazmat suits?”

I have an idea. “I’ll ask Teddy. He knew a survivalist kook who probably had at least one.”

Around dusk, Miriam and Anais lower a lead-lined safe full of mostly alien organic matter, mostly liquefied, into a deep hole in the ground. As they cover it with dirt, I place a 3D-printed grave marker beside the grave that reads 

Molly Schindler, Genius 

2016 - 2027

Also, the remains of the alien bugs 

that killed her

DO NOT EXHUME

  
  


Tonight, every bot in Anais’ arsenal is patrolling the area, scanning in the visible spectrum, infrared, ultraviolet, even sonar and radio spectra just to be sure. If any of them sees anything unusual, an alarm will go off on Anais’ laptop, which she’s placed on her bedside table. That would freak me out, but she, Miriam and Susmita seem to be managing - quite well from the sound of it. 

The sex-on-a-burning-viking-ship principle still pertains. I’ve been all over the twins for about an hour, which feels weird - not the two guys thing, I’m over feeling weird about that. It’s that they’re brothers. I keep thinking it should be uncomfortable for _them._ I mean, the thought of me and freaking Louise going to town on the same guy simultaneously makes my skin crawl. 

Maybe that says more about Me, Louise, or my relationship with her than anything else, but seriously, I’d rather do it with Teddy (who has long since apologized for being creepy toward me in the early days of the plague. We’re cool now. No harm, no foul).

On the plus side, the Laras have a lot of experience sharing and sharing alike. They’ve developed a coordinated yet flexible strategy for sending a woman to the moon and beyond. And for my own part, I’ve become quite adept at doing it in groups of various configurations. I can give as good as I get.

So despite my discomfort with the fraternal aspect, we really should do this more often.

  
  


JODI

I really should do it with Mac more often. He has a way of making me feel safe, and I could really use that right now.

He also has a way of giving me cataclysmic orgasms, which I could really use pretty much anytime. I swear the man is an artist. I didn’t believe Tina when she said he could control the _kind_ of orgasm he gives me, but damned if it isn’t true. At least in the West, Asian guys always had a bad rap as lovers, even more so as sex objects in the first place.

But Mac is hot. Obviously, he’s completely American culturally, but I always liked Asian features on guys, and - particularly as a tiny slip of a thing myself - I like his slim, non-macho-looking form. Plus, he’s stronger than he looks - his drummer’s arms can hold a girl _real_ tight. 

His hands are really powerful, too. He’s currently massaging my buttocks with them and going down on me with a ferocity that belies his usual mild-mannered demeanor. Jesus, he’s good at that. I’m going on my third - and third type! - of orgasm, and after that, I’m going to pry his head from my crotch and return the favor. In at least three ways.

I’m usually pretty submissive sexually - I save my command mode for running the household, and the marriage - but there’s something about what Tina calls burning-Viking-ship sex that turns me into, well, a Viking. Mac’s not going to know what hit him. I’m thinking up ideas even as I’m... no, can’t think right now... we who are about to die salute you!

  
  


SUSMITA

Anais is so thin. Not unhealthily so -- she’s just one of those people who are genetically predetermined to be skinny.

But I think it’s that, more than her being female, that initially made it weird for me to make love to her. She’s all points and angles. It’s beautiful on her, because it’s what she was born to be, not a product of bulimia or starvation as is the case with many women with her build. It’s just her.

The weirdest part for me now is her breasts, which are teeny. Like a slightly overweight adolescent boy’s. Again, they’re beautiful because they’re part of her; but I still experience a certain cognitive dissonance. 

On the other hand, they’re almost as sensitive as her clitoris, so no one is complaining.

Miriam, by contrast, is big and fleshy. Not obese (not that I care), but ample. It’s wonderful. I frequently get lost in her, until Anais leads me out.

I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

Particularly since I’ve also got three guys in the house to hand my hetero hat on. God, I’d love to get all five of us in one bed... but Miriam and Anais are exclusively gay - a couple of Kinsey sixes. I think if either one of them ever touched a dick, they’d have to blow their brains out.

So I’m working on Tina and Jodi, albeit with little progress.

Regardless, with Anais’ laptop on the side table a constant reminder that there might be walkers out in the darkness, we’ve been having spectacular, asteroid-impact-in-6-hours sex, as Tina calls it, all night. 

I know she also causes it burning-Viking-ship sex, but I thought I’d change things up a bit.

I know sexuality is innate, determined genetically, but damn, why aren’t there more gay people? As has been frequently pointed out, who knows better how to please you than someone with the same equipment?

On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind adding a guy to the mix... Maybe just Mac. The twins are big and burly and hairy. My cuddle-bears, but Mac is slim and smooth - even his legs are no harrier than Miriam’s. Maybe she and Anais could be convinced to welcome him to our bed. 

Maybe if we choreographed things so they never had to see his dick?

A girl can dream.

Pardon me, I’ve got two women to please. I’m getting better at it, but it still takes a lot of concentration.

  
  


LOUISE

Rudy is freaking out. I was hoping for a night of what Tina calls, among other things, Zombie Apocalypse sex, but my man is losing his shit.

Not that I blame him - we had an honest to God walker in the neighborhood today, and who knows how many more may follow. But dammit, everyone else seems able to sublimate their fear into erotic energy.

Meanwhile, Rude is at the living room window, staring down Ocean Drive toward the park. With his binoculars. “There! I saw something move!”

“Of course you did. There’s like ten robots out patrolling the area. If there’s anything scary out there, they’ll take care of it.”

Well, they’d alert the Trynamic Trio at Tina’s place, and they’d send a drone with liquid nitrogen to take care of it. But there’s no point being that literal at the moment.

“Come on, Rude, everything’s fine. Just come to bed. It’s after 2 am.” Maybe I could appeal to his libido. I almost never talk dirty - that might get his attention. “Ruuudyyy... “ I sing, “it’s almost suck-your-dick thirtyyyyy.”

It does get a reaction, but not the one I was hoping for. He looks at me with faint distaste. “Louise, please.”

Goddammit, what kind of a man turns down an invitation like that from the woman he worships?

A really, really frightened one.

I pull him back fully into the room, shut the window, and close the drapes.

“Rudy, please,” I say, and hold him as tight as I can. “You really don’t have to keep watch. The bots can see in infrared. You can’t. You’re not adding anything to the mix.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m just so fucking scared.” The last word becomes a wail, and he sobs on my shoulder. I cling to him and ride it out. I don’t know why I’m not more scared, myself. But just this moment, I can handle it and Rudy, usually my rock, my pillar of strength, cannot. 

I’m still annoyed, but I owe him this. He’s the only reason I’m still alive, the only reason I bothered to keep going that first year. 

Eventually, he’s all cried out. He looks up, and my heart sinks to see his eyes wet and bloodshot. But that feeling quickly passes as he grins and says “what time was it again?”

_Buddy, when I get through with you, you’re not going to know what_ year _it is._

In the morning, we wake gradually, blissfully.

Until we hear One of the mantis-bots clomping through the neighborhood, loudspeakers blaring, in Anais’ curiously deadpan voice “...and lock all doors. If possible, stay in an upstairs area. 

“There is a group of seven walkers in the vicinity of the Wharf. We got this covered, but we need you to take every precaution possible in case we make a mistake. Tina, take over.”

“Uhhhhhhhhh”

“Dammit, Tina!”

“Sorry, OK. Get inside and stay inside. Close all windows and lock all doors. If possible, stay in an upstairs area...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit's about to get real, so I thought I'd throw in some mild smut to smooth the transition...


	9. Face-off and Lockdown

SUSMITA

"What the hell, Howard?" I yell at my laptop. You're supposed to be scanning for these things. Particularly near  _ us _ . How did you miss those guys?"

I'm being unfair, of course, but I'm terrified, on the edge of hysteria.

Miriam, Anais, and I are in one of the ATVs, heavily armored with two extra layers of Anais' super-strong alloy for just such an occasion. We also have a liquid nitrogen cannon - an improvised flamethrower type apparatus - to hurl frozen death at our insect adversaries.

In front of us, all four of our Mantis-bots march toward what with any luck will not be their doom. They, too, are more heavily armed and armored than their predecessors, sporting half-gallon liquid nitrogen tanks and being constructed of the same alloy as the ATV. 

Our entire fleet of dragonfly-bots - twenty-two in total - have already reached the walkers. They have no offensive capabilities, but they will be monitoring the encounter from multiple angles and distances and feeding their tactical information to the mantis-bots’ AIs. That should keep them one step ahead of the walkers - or, more importantly, the bugs - at all times.

We, on the other hand, are flying by the seat of our pants. Miriam is piloting the ATV, Anais is monitoring and communicating with the mantises, and I’m doing the same with the dragonflies. Not that either of us can be of any help in real-time - the bots’ can react a hundred times faster than we can. But they’re keeping us apprised of the situation by text messages.

“Hey,” says Howard, “give me a break. I don’t have the kind of AI you guys do to monitor my satellite feed. I mean, I’ve developed some pretty complex algorithms, but my satellites aren’t fucking  _ sentient. _ ” 

“I’m sorry, Howard, I know. I’m just freaking out.”

“Don’t blame you,” he says. “But, yeah, this is worrisome. I can’t tell where they came from.” 

They’re approaching from the general direction of the Wharf, but there are no tracks in the sand (which is a relief - if these things had come from the sea, I think we’d have to leave town - and completely reassess the situation). 

“But there’s something I’ve been putting off checking, which is dumb, but I'm not sure I really want to know the answer."

“Wait, what? What the hell does that mean?”

“Hold on...”

I hold on. We’re now about a minute away from our rendezvous with the walkers. 

“Howard? Howard...? Any time now, Howard...”

By the time Howard gets back to me, I can see the fucking whites of their dead eyes. “Guys, they came from the mass grave in the schoolyard.”

I can’t fight - or even monitor - this battle paralyzed with fear and horror, so I put a pin in that, remind myself that suicide is always an option, and get on with it. I see Miriam steeling herself. 

Anais is not coping as well. She's moaning quietly, something like Tina’s “uhhhhhhhh,” but at a higher pitch. She is shaking visibly. Between moans she is hyperventilating. 

At this point, the ATV’s movements - now halted anyway - are under the control of the same AI that’s running the bots. I gesture with my head for Miriam to go tend to her girlfriend while I face front and watch robots face off against the walking dead. 

And when I was a kid, I  _ wanted _ my life to be like a science fiction novel.

Unlike the previous walkers, these do not stop lurching forward when sensing, if they do, the proximity of the bots. Three mantises, walking backward with their deep-freeze nozzles at the ready, maintain a distance of about four feet from the three walkers that roughly make up the front line (the other four straggling behind at various distances). The fourth Mantis has stepped around to face the stragglers and keep them at bay if necessary.

Behind me, Miriam has taken over monitoring the mantises. Anais is sitting on the floor, hugging herself, chin against her knees, rocking back and forth. I want to run over and comfort her, but it’s going to have to wait until after my freak out and before my suicide, because just at that moment, Miriam mutters something into her headset, and the three lead mantis-bots let fly a blizzard of supercooled nitrogen. 

It takes about ten seconds for the cloud of steam to dissipate enough for us to see that the three walkers are frozen in place. But we have no time to celebrate, because a moment later we are inundated with alarms and messages from the bots that nineteen bugs threw themselves free in time to escape being frozen, and are dashing away rapidly in all directions. Well, nineteen directions.

One of them heads straight for us. We don’t realize it’s coming until we hear a clunk in front of us near the ground, and moments later a bug runs chittering up the windshield, putting cracks in the reinforced plexiglass.

As Miriam and I cry “fuck!” in unison and Anais moans, nineteen of the dragonflies break off to pursue the bugs. The rest focus on the remaining walkers, as do the four mantises.

“Fuck this,” Miriam snarls, “They go low, we go high.” 

This strikes me as an odd sentiment under the circumstances, but I’m thinking of the political slogan from eleven years ago. 

By way of clarification, she says “the mantises are going to hit them from the waist down -  _ after  _ we send a massive spray at their heads. That should cover them from the waist up, and how they react should tell us if freezing the brain bug really does put them all out of commission.”

“Good plan,” I say.

“Yeah - unless we’re wrong, in which case we’ll have dozens of or hundreds of worker bugs to contend with.”

Anais already has despondent moaning covered, so I just put my head in my hands.

Miriam adjusts the settings on what I’ve decided to call the “nitro-cannon” because it’s concise and sounds cool, counts to three and, rather undramatically, clicks a button on her laptop screen.

The nitro-canon (woo! That  _ is _ cool-sounding _ ),  _ rotating and adjusting the power of its spray slightly to allow for the various distances of the stragglers, lets out four powerful jets that soar over the mantises and directly at the heads of the walkers. Immediately after each hit, a mantis follows up with a long spray, aimed lower.

The fog takes closer to fifteen seconds to clear this time, but when it does, all four walkers are lying frozen at the intersection of Shoreline Avenue and Ocean Drive. Satisfyingly, each has shattered on the asphalt into two or three pieces.

I celebrate for about a millisecond, then I remember the loose bugs. 

And the mass graves.

I turn to look at Miriam, who is on the floor comforting Anais. I join them.

Anais is weeping “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was just too much. The grave... I can’t... I’m sorry.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” murmurs Miriam. “It’s okay.”

“The bugs,” whispers Anais. “There were bugs that ran off. What’re we going to do?”

“The dragonflies are tracking them,” I say, “figuring out how to predict their movements. When they do, the Mantises will cut each one off at the pass and freeze them.” 

The bugs are fast, but the new mantises can overtake them. 45 MPH at a gallop. Anais is a freaking genius.

“And if they can’t?” She asks, reasonably. “If they miss one? Or two? Or ten?”

“Then,” says Miriam, “we alert everyone in a two hundred mile radius to stay indoors for about 24 hours while they run out of steam. If they’re anything like the ones in Montana, they can’t live without the brain bugs.”

“And if they’re not?”

Goddammit, Anais, one catastrophe at a time.

  
  


TINA

Our scientists are rolling through town in their ATV, warning everyone to stay indoors for the next day or so until the stray bugs die off. 

Fine. More time - and reason - for burning-Viking-ship sex.

But to be honest, I’m not in the mood. Nor is anyone else in the house. Probably in the entire town. Shambling corpses are one thing. You can outrun them. You can climb a fucking tree so they can’t reach you. But those individual bugs, with their razor-sharp, electric knife teeth, chasing you at about fifteen miles an hour? Those are the nightmares other monsters have.

Plus there’s the mass grave angle. They’re not alerting the town to that part - people are already freaking out; why engender mass hysteria?

But we’re going to have to deal with it. Meaning, I guess, that we’re going to have to remove the top layer of dirt and burn up what’s left of our friends and neighbors - most of whom are wrapped in plastic, so there will be overwhelming toxic fumes. Then there’s the matter of the half-dozen local graveyards. Also, every graveyard everywhere. And figuring out where the brain bugs are coming from, and how to stop them.

All in all, I’d say our plates are pretty full.

I’m worried about Jodi. She recovered fully from her breakdown, but that one was brought on by the mere potential of what is now a nightmarish reality. She seems to be holding it together better than most of us, actually, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s that “the prospect of death concentrates the mind” effect.

If so, I wish I could borrow a cup from her. I can’t focus on anything figuring out ways to kill myself quickly if one of those meat-grinding monstrosities latches onto me. My preferred method, probably unavailable: jumping into a giant fusion reactor like Ripley at the end of Aliens 3. Or was it “Alien 3?” The title of the first movie was singular, the second plural. Technically, the third movie should have been either “Alien 2” or “Aliens 2”

Or “Alienss.”

Yep. Can’t concentrate. Probably just as well.

  
  


JESSICA

Mille insists on walking up both flights of stairs herself. This is hardly the time, and I’m terrified that at any moment a bug is going to burrow through the front door and rip us to shreds, but I’m so proud of her that I agree to let her do it, as long as she lets me stay with her for moral - and possibly physical - support.

She makes it from the basement to the main floor on her own - amazing! - but by that point, she’s in agony and agrees to let Danny carry her the rest of the way. (She initially refused to let him help her at all since that’s what he always does.)

So now we’re all huddled in the attic which, unlike the one next door at Chez Bob, is fully finished and more than suitable for human habitation. So we get to be terrified out of our minds in comfort. 

Danny, Millie, Jocelyn, and I are having a cuddle party in one corner of the room. It’s more of a comforting-each-other-against-stark-mortal-terror party, but I choose to tell myself that, really, isn’t that all that life is, anyway? 

I’m not very convincing.

Gene, Mel, and Courtney are sitting up on the queen platform bed, reading Mayor Meyer’s trilogy, trying to be - or at least seem - nonchalant, and almost succeeding. On the floor at the foot of the bed, Louise and Rudy sit, Louise in back, holding him tightly, and rocking a bit. 

This is good for about ten minutes, then we seem to all simultaneously become restless, shifting our positions or, in the case of Rudy and Louise, standing up and pacing.

“How long is this going to go on?” says Louise. “The loose bugs in Montana ran around biting everything they touched for almost 24 hours. Are we going to be on lockdown for a full day? And what if a bug burrows in here through the front door. There’s no fire escape in this room, no window. We’re trapped.”

“We don’t have to be all the way up here,” says Gene as casually as he can muster, “They’re just saying to stay inside and above ground level. Downstairs qualifies and - I cannot stress this enough - that’s where the  _ food  _ is.”

He has a good point. I add “it’s also well-ventilated down there. A few hours of eight people’s terror sweat and it’s going to stink up here. It’s already starting to.”

That sells it. Without a word, we start filing out, down the ladder to the second floor. Danny takes Millie down in a gentle fireman’s carry. 

By tacit agreement, we all gather in the living room. Rudy heads for the window but Louise cuts him off. I’m not sure what that’s about. We gather the same configuration as we did upstairs - Gene, Mel, and Courtney reading on the couch, Millie, Danny, Joss and me in the corner terror-cuddling, Louise and Rudy sitting in front of the coffee table, Louise in back, holding Rudy. Only this time around, she seems to actually be restraining him.

“You are not going to spend the next 24 hours staring out the window again,” I hear her mutter. Okay, apparently that’s a thing. 

It’s a beautiful day. Clear blue skies, morning sun pouring in at a sharp angle (our windows are more or less perpendicular to the shoreline and the rising sun), sea birds calling, tree birds singing. A perfect, idyllic day for a murderous-alien-bug-related lockdown.

We’re all silent for a few minutes. What is there to say. Then, more or less randomly, Gene pipes in with “Have any of you guys read the Longshore Trilogy? It’s amazing. I’m on book three, and I can’t put it down. Court’s on book two. If anyone wants to start on it, Book one is in my bedroom.”

More silence.

“Suit yourself,” says Gene.

Still more silence.

“Anyone,” says Rudy, “wanna play Pictionary.”

“No!” we all reply. 

Fucking Pictionary. Jesus.

But he was just trying to help. “Sorry, Rude,” I say. “I just don’t think we could concentrate on it.”

“Thanks,” he says. “But, I mean, could we at least talk about something? Anything? I don’t think I can take 24 hours of silence.”

“Me, either,” says Louise. 

“Yeah,” drawls Joss - in her fear, she’s regressed a bit in her speech patterns. “We should, like, pick a topic or something. You know, just to get started.”

“Okay,” says Danny. “How ‘bout them Mets?”

And the silence returns.

“Um,” says Danny, “that was a joke. I’m actually a Yankees man.”

Okay, now  _ that’s _ funny. I giggle, which sets Joss off, and soon the room is ringing with laughter. Nervous, why-the-fuck-are-we-laughing laughter, but still, a joyous noise.

“So, um,” I begin, not sure where I’m going with this, “wanna talk about the old days? I mean, I know it’s sad, but it’s also not, you know. We had good times, and they made us who we are. You know?”

The idea is greeted with some skepticism. And trepidation. Louise probably speaks for everyone present when she says “sure, let’s talk about all the people and things that are gone. Everything we’ve lost. All our friends and relatives who died agonizing plague deaths. That’ll be a hoot.”

Jocelyn comes to my rescue. “No, Jess is right. I mean, do we actually want to forget all those--”

“Yes!” spits Louise.

“No, dammit,” says Millie. “We should remember. Everything. I miss my parents every day, but if I never talk about them, I’ll forget what their voices sounded like, maybe even what they looked like.

“Dad had this straight black hair and dark skin. He was Italian. You’d never know it to look at me, though, ‘cause I take after my mom. She was tall and Norwegian and had poofy red hair. I look like all of her relatives. Except for the poofy hair.”

Interesting: no one is complaining about Millie’s reminiscences. In fact, they’re paying rapt attention. 

“They met in France at EuroDisney. The Mickey mouse doll he got her is still in my old bedroom. I should go get it. And the family photos. No, I should move back in there - no, no, I couldn’t bear it.

“But you’ve got to hand it to them, they raised a completely insane child without losing their cool. They were kind and loving to a stone psychopath. 

Copious tears run down her cheeks, but Millie is smiling radiantly. She needs this. We all need this.

I want to talk about my parents, but I can’t gather the courage before Danny, his eyes never leaving Millie, begins: “Both my dads survived the plague, but the stress of losing my brother and sister was just too much. They loved me enough to live for me, but they just lost hope as everything collapsed. Stan had a heart attack about six months in and about a month later, Bill asked me for a vial full of Vicodin from a sports injury I’d had a few years back. Bringing it to him was the hardest, most loving thing I’ve ever done.

“They were great. They had the most awesome relationship. Stan was a joker, and Bill grinned and bore it. And they were both these totally straight-acting, bearded dudes that loved beer and sports -- and, yeah, theater. They met playing baseball in the Broadway Show League in New York. Stan was a lighting tech, Bill was a stage manager. They were doing Rent and Forum respectively. Bill always envied Stan for getting to do Rent.

“They used to have big Broadway stars at their parties. I met everyone. Lila Crawford was the first girl I dated, when we were 14. How I became a jock, I’ll never know.”

Mille kisses him, long and deep, and says “Good thing though. I need a big, strong man to carry me around.”

“Not for much longer,” says Danny. “Soon I’ll have to win you over with my personality.”

That said, they get back to nuzzling each other.

“My folks were kind of distant,” says Rudy. “Dad was this crass, desperate divorcee, Mom expressed her love though by standing between me and any form of life experience other than breathing, which she figured required all my concentration.

“I resented them for a long time. God forgive me, I wasn’t even that upset when they died. I mean I was sad. Very sad. But not the way you should be for a parent. I resented them for a long time, before and after they died. But I understand them better now. Individually, anyway. I’ll never understand why they got together in the first place. 

“But I get them now. Dad was terrible at raising me, caring for me, but he did love me. He was just self-centered and completely miserable. That doesn’t excuse him being a crappy father, but I understand. Mom... Mom was afraid of everything, and once she had a sickly child, she sublimated all of that fear into protecting me from... well, everything. 

“God... I just realized, she was miserable, too. I actually feel sorry for them. Maybe that’s why I didn’t lose it when they died. Maybe on some level, I realized it was a mercy. Jesus, they were in so much pain.

“I... I don't want to romanticize them. They were shallow people who didn’t have a lot to offer the world. They didn’t really... matter. Oh, God, how can I say that? But they didn’t, really.” 

Rudy is weeping now, a man who has just had an agonizing, demoralizing epiphany. Louise is murmuring in his ear, but I’m just able to hear. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. Like I said, honor them by remembering who they really were, not who you wanted them to be.”

What the hell have I unleashed?

Courtney: “My folks were really shallow, too, Rude. They kind of loved me without caring too deeply about me. Dad was protective, but that was the only way he knew to show affection, and it was more about his own self-image... like, as Protector and Provider than it was about me. Like the way he wrote that awful musical for me - it was about his ego, not my happiness.

“But he loved me. The best he could. The best he could do kind of sucked, but he loved me. I know he did. Mom... Mom was a cipher - is that the word? No particular personality. She tried to love me, but she didn’t really know how to love anyone. Yeah, I don’t think she actually did love me, but I think she wanted to. Not as much as she wanted a nice house and an expensive car and wood floors. 

“Dammit, I hate them. I hate them!” Now  _ she’s  _ in tears. “They tried. They tried. But they sucked. Do you know how hard I worked to be better than them? To rise above their influence? It nearly killed me. God, I hate them. I love them but I hate them. And they're dead and it makes me want to be dead too. And they don’t deserve that. I mean, thanks for bringing me into existence, but that’s just because Dad’s condom broke. And he actually  _ told me _ that! Fuck him. Fuck him.”

Gene, who has held her tight in his arms since before she spoke, rocks her back and forth. He whispers something to her, but this time, I can’t make it out.

Jocelyn: “I freaking hate my mom. She’s such a waste of space, and she almost turned me into the same thing. No wonder my dad left her. But... he left me, too, the bastard. He owed me a childhood -his penance for being shallow enough to fuck her. He owed me. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive. And I should care, but I don’t. The asshole left me alone with the human equivalent of a queef.”

Jesus. This is getting dark. With my eyes, I plead with Mel to change to mood; she shrugs. 

“Well,” she says, “some of us had decent parents. Oof. Sorry, that came out more obnoxious than I intended. But, yeah, continuing where Danny left off, Mel had two mommies, both of them freaking awesome. And both white as milk, so I used to stick out like a sore, red thumb. They adopted me when I was an infant, a trick it generally takes a boatload of money and resources to pull off, and they  _ were _ loaded. Shelly inherited a fortune from a wealthy, old-moneyed lesbian aunt who was rejected by the rest of her immediate family. And Beth came from oil money. Her dad was practically a robber baron. 

“So they had nothing to do but stay at home, create gorgeous arts and crafts, and raise their adopted daughter, eventually buying her every bit of musical equipment she asked for. I was privileged as fuck, almost to the point of having white privilege by osmosis. 

“But it’s not about the money and the toys. They loved me to distraction. They... this feels weird to say, but neither of them was particularly bright. But they saw how smart I was, encouraged me, sent me to a special school, the whole deal. They would have died for me without a second thought. 

“But eventually, they died for each other. They both woke up one morning with the eyes...” That stings. Been there, been traumatized by that. “...and... I don’t know why they chose to do it this way, but...” She takes a deep breath, then another. “We lived in a 20th floor apartment, and they jumped. They’d read that from that height, death happens so fast, you don’t suffer. You never even know what hit you.”

Mel is in tears now, and a quick look around the room reveals that she’s far from alone. “I loved them so much. They were great. Can we stop here? Maybe talk about movies or something. I think this is enough.”

I had wanted to talk about my parents, but Mel is right. That was enough, at least for now. But I do finally find my voice.

“Guys, I’m with Mel, but one more thing. They loved us, all of them, whatever their flaws. And we loved them, however much we resented them or were disappointed, even betrayed by them. They were human. They were good, they sucked, they were a hundred different things. People are complicated. Even sociopaths value their own.

“So if you hate them, try to give them a break. If you love them, remember that. Whatever they were, they were ours, and they brought us into this fucked up world. Let them rest in peace in your own minds.

“Now, I want to hear everyone’s top five animes...”


	10. Bugging Out - and In

RUDY

“...so the secret seems to be to just stay out of their way,” says Miriam.

Good to know, but I’m still scared out of my mind. There are a bunch of living wood chippers  scuttling around randomly at 20 miles per hour, attacking everything they bump into face first. Concrete, steel, bricks, everything. Plus they have a known taste for human flesh. 

But at least they’re not actively seeking the latter. Without the brain bugs controlling them, the worker bugs are like headless chickens. Headless chickens that will fucking kill you.

So far, we’ve had one casualty. Not a fatality, thank God, but I don’t envy Joe Zimmerman the nightmares he’s going to endure for the rest of his life. Or the phantom pain he’s going to have where his left hand used to be. 

A bug burrowed into his home, he went after it with an ax, and it latched onto his left hand in the struggle. Amazingly for a man whose hand was being ground into hamburger, he kept fighting, but couldn’t get a clean hit because the bug was wriggling too violently, so he chopped off his own hand to prevent the bug from eating its way up his arm.

This disoriented the bug long enough for him to smash its head in (while, remember, he was bleeding out through his self-inflicted stump), which slowed it down considerably.

Somehow, he managed to tie a tourniquet around the stump tightly enough to stop the bleeding, applied an entire tube of antibiotic cream to the exposed end, bandaged it, took a couple of Vicodin, carefully gathered up the remains of his would-be assassin, depositing them in a metal trash can to be retrieved and studied, and drove himself to the clinic. 

That is literally the most badass thing I have ever heard. That it was accomplished by a slight, middle-aged former English teacher who talks like Woody Allen makes it all the more remarkable. Some people have balls of steel. And sometimes, it’s the people you’d least expect.

Meanwhile, it’s about six hours until our scientists predict the bugs will run out of steam. They recommend that everyone stay indoors until all nineteen bugs have been  _ confirmed  _ dead, which could be  _ 12  _ hours from now - if we’re lucky - and I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. I’m exhausted from being awake for a day and a half, and even more exhausted from being continuously terrified for that entire time. And I can’t sleep. I feel like I may never sleep again. 

Louise is doing her best to keep me grounded, as are the rest of my housemates - which makes me feel incredibly guilty, since they all have their own fears to attend to. Louise assures me that it’s actually good for everyone to have me to focus on instead of their own feelings. Makes sense, but I still feel bad about it.

Most of the town is aware that the bugs’ numbers are dwindling, but Tina has kept us up to date on the details. 

Four of the bugs ran straight into the ocean, where, one can assume, they eviscerated a great white shark or two, and maybe the Kraken, before either drowning or filling up on sand (empty calories). Maybe they can breathe underwater. Maybe they don’t need to breathe. Maybe they’re like the Newcomers in Alien Nation, and saltwater is like acid to them, and all we have to do in the future is herd the walkers into the sea.

Seems unlikely, but show me a straw, and I’ll grasp at it. You gotta grasp at something. Might as well be a straw.

The other fifteen fanned out into the town and mostly bumped off curbs like pinballs. Occasionally, one would hit a curb mouth first and start tearing through it. After a minute or so - long enough for it to tunnel in about a foot - it would get confused and wriggle back out ( _ This is not food! Must find food. Go back to running around randomly!) _ where a mantis-bot would be waiting to freeze it and pulverize it. 

Incidents like that account for the majority of the property damage in town. That and a lot of shredded tires.

The mantises disposed of seven bugs in the above manner, but the remaining eight have spread out into the park and the unpopulated section of town. One has been tracked to Bog Harbor.

The three in the park are making a mess attacking every stray tree branch and any plant larger than a blade of grass. It would be funny if it weren’t so... no, actually, it  _ is  _ funny. Two of them drilled straight down into the soil until they hit bedrock. They probably would have kept going, but their confusion instincts kicked in about then, so they wriggled out backward and got an ass full of liquid nitrogen. Not that they, as far as we can tell so far, actually possess asses.

The other one that headed into the park didn’t bump into anything significant until it hit the slightly raised asphalt walking path. It found it much harder to chow down on than the concrete encountered by some of its colleagues. Much slower going. Before its stupidity caught up with it, it only made it about four inches in. Then - and this is actually significant - when it tried to reverse, it found itself stuck.

Susmita thinks that the inside of the bugs’ digestive systems is very hot and that the asphalt actually  _ melted  _ inside the one in the park, immobilizing it. 

Now, all we have to do to be safe is to build a great asphalt wall around the town. (And get Mexican bugs to pay for it, of course.)

How many bugs does that leave? Nevermind, that covers all the new information we have. They’re all accounted for, and most have been destroyed. Our long national nightmare should be over on schedule.

Until the next walkers appear. 

  
  


JESSICA

I’ve spent most of the day amazed at one thing or another. 

First, it was birds. They can’t be killed. Actual dinosaurs, they survived, along with early mammals, the complete extinction of their non-avian cousins. They weathered every major natural disaster of the last 60 million years. And just recently, they survived a plague that wiped out everything furry over two or three pounds, as well as huge chunks of other phyla.

Luckily for predators like hawks, their dietary requirements slipped in under that bar. And enough bugs (regular ones), insects, and microbes essential to the life cycle of plants survived that herbivorous birds have had no trouble. 

In fact, there has been an almost Hitchcockian explosion of the avian dinosaur population since the plague. Every day, I see a dozen hawks circling in the sky, occasionally diving at some unlucky rodent and carrying it away to its doom. Magnificent great bald eagles are a daily spectacle.

We have a bit of a seagull problem, but at least the local colony has settled on King’s Head Island, not in town. And they have plenty of small fish to hunt for about a mile offshore. I think they’re less interested in Seymour’s Bay because of the nearly complete lack of roadkill to munch on.

To almost universal delight, the area is now home to hundreds of hummingbirds. But it’s weird - they never tell you this in nature documentaries, but the damned things  _ buzz _ loudly. It’s the sound of their wings flapping at a rate of 10 to 15 times per second. So I’ve had to learn to hear the sound of passing hummingbirds without freaking out thinking I’m about to be attacked by a bee the size of a softball.

Later, it was Joe Zimmerman, who drove himself to the clinic around 3 pm with one hand - the other being a bloody stump. I listened in astonishment as he calmly related the story of his encounter with one of the loose bugs, which ended with him chopping off his own hand. He said it hurt less than his hand being shredded by the bug, and I believe him.

But I think he’s one of those people who don’t experience pain as intensely as most of us. Good for him. I wish I could map his genome, extract the proteins that give him that characteristic, and splice them into my own DNA. Then I might be able to eat spicy food. And not fear death as much.

Now I’m on my third moment of amazement. I just got back from my late shift at the clinic, and everyone is asleep - exhausted, no doubt, from the long state of emergency, and at least somewhat relieved that it’s over.

I’m thinking about my roommates - no, my family. About what a beautiful thing is a family of choice. Not only when the rest of your family is gone, as is mine, but simply for its own sake.

I love my family. Jocelyn, my strange lover, who goes through phases like David Bowie went through personas; Louise, my first true childhood friend, pro-level pillow fighter, anger stylist and secret softie; Rudy, the little engine that could - Louise worshipper and regular-sized pillar of strength; Millie, former lunatic, survivor of the unsurvivable, and, if I’m reading her vibes right, possible new lover; Danny, Millie’s adoring lover and  _ full-sized _ pillar-of-strength; Courtney, easygoing, not especially impressive at first glance, but possessing of a brilliant mind and a kind, compassionate heart; Mel, bass-player extraordinaire, tough exterior hiding a true romantic (and a luscious demon in the sack. Man, it’s been too long...); and Gene - unassuming founder and default head of the household, musician, connoisseur of fart humor, lover of Courtney, Jocelyn and Mel (and occasionally Scott, who moved out shortly after Mel moved in, feeling that Gene was spreading himself too thin to be a full-time lover. I miss him).

A few years back, I couldn’t have imagined a life so closely entwined - and at such close quarters - with so many people. Now I can’t imagine living any other way. Well, I can imagine moving the whole group into a much larger house, maybe one in Tina’s neighborhood. We really are packed in like sardines at this point.

Having no idea who is sleeping with whom tonight, I tiptoe into Gene’s room, figuring it’s the most likely to have room for me, - to find my entire family arranged across the two king mattresses. Beautiful, and not actually surprising. Safety in numbers.

There’s a slim space between Millie and Louise, so I slide in, trying not to wake anyone. And failing. Mille wakes gently and smiles beatifically at me. “Welcome home,” she whispers.

And kisses me.

Oh, boy. Was that a “hello, friend” kiss or a “hello, sailor” kiss? I can’t tell. It was just a smooch, but replaying it, there was a certain energy to it...

MIllie gazes at me and raises an eyebrow, as if to say “so...”

“Seriously?” I say.

“As a heart attack,” she says.

I blush. “I’m, uh, woo, um, I’m flattered,” I sputter.

“Hmm,” she hums, “but are you interested? Could you make love to twisted gimp like me?”

Does she really still see herself that way? No, her expression bears an uncanny resemblance to a wink emoticon, particularly since she’s lying on her side.

“You’re not a twisted gimp, and yeah, I could.”

“Good. I’m too tired now, but let’s go for it the next time we’re both up to it.”

I beam at her and plant a kiss on her lips, one with a little passion mixed in. She sees me and raises me a tongue kiss, and now I’m feeling like, exhausted as we both are, we still might just want to get right to it.

I’m curious about something. “Have you ever been with a girl before?” I ask. “I mean, I know Danny was your first lover, and I haven’t seen you with anyone else.”

“Nope, I’m a girl-virgin.” She giggles, which I’ve never heard her do, and the sound sends a powerful signal to my nether regions. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to deflower her here in the presence of the entire mishpookah.

“I never even thought about girls until I got here and started getting better. Maybe when I went sane, I also went bi-”

“This is so awesome,” I say, and it’s clear to Mille that I’m not talking about getting laid. She regards me quizzically.

“I’ve got someone new to talk with about girl-stuff. And someone to teach the ways of Sappho,” I add with a flourish and a chuckle. “By the way, you’re sure Danny’s OK with this?”

Danny, who has apparently been awake for a while, says “She doesn’t mind if I have a boyfriend. Why should I mind if she has a girlfriend?”

Interesting. I didn’t know Danny was bi-. 

You know, I kind of feel left out of all this bisexual stuff. I’m surrounded by switch hitters, and not only am I not bi-curious, I’m almost violently averse to it. I’m bi-terrified. For myself - anything anyone else wants to do is fine with me. 

But I just can’t go there. I watched Gene make love to Jocelyn once, and quietly freaked out at the sight of his erection. Joss invited me to join in - with her; she knows I’m a Kinsey 6 - but I just couldn’t do it. I mean, what if I touched it by accident. What if Gene, in all his sincerity and sweetness, wanted to kiss me. I’d run out of the room screaming - not very fair to him.

Look, I’ve seen plenty of dicks - alive and dead - in a clinical setting. I’m not phallophobic for general purposes. I just don’t want to interact with one in anything resembling a sexual context, and that includes even just seeing one. I suppose I should be more open - not to going against my own sexuality, but to being around the expression of other people’s. 

I’ll work on it.

“Good point,” I say. “So it’s a date?”

Millie nods, but Danny has a better idea. “Look, would you just go fuck each other so the rest of us can get some sleep?”

And to my chagrin, the rest of the room agrees in unison: “Yeah!”

Oy gevalt.

I sigh. “Well,  _ fine _ , if you insist.”

  
  


LOUISE

About damn time. Those two have been flirting and making goo-goo eyes at each other for months. 

  
  


GENE

Seriously. Actually, they started just after Millie returned. I just don’t think they even realised it until recently.

  
  


LOUISE

Huh. You know, I think you’re right.

So, bro, how are you holding up. I mean, how are you  _ really _ holding up. You and Court put on brave faces, but I could tell it was a strain.

  
  


GENE

Well, you know, fake it ‘til you make it. But yeah, I’d say I’m about at 9.5 on the Scared Shitless scale - which is like the Richter scale; it’s a logarithmic progression. Those walkers came from the mass graves, sis. Which means that every recently dead person on the planet is a potential walker. I can’t even... what the fuck do we do?

  
  


LOUISE

Eat, drink and be merry?

  
  


GENE

Good call. I’m gonna raid the fridge, then raid Courtney.

  
  


LOUISE

Cool. Just use another room.

  
  


GENE

_ You  _ use another room.

  
  


LOUISE

Nah. Rudy’s scared stiff, but not where it counts.

No offense, Rude.

  
  


RUDY

None taken. The truth is an absolute defense against libel.

  
  


GENE

We’ll get through this. Maybe even with our lives. If not, being a walker looks like a good gig. The bugs do all the work, there’s no performance reviews...

  
  


RUDY

Gene, please stop faking it. I’m close enough to strangle you, and you need your throat for eating.

  
  


GENE

Point taken. I’ll go have my terror banquet.

  
  


LOUISE

“Terror banquet.” OK, just pace yourself. And leave enough food in the cupboards for breakfast.

GENE

Fill up on bread. Got it.


	11. Bad Weird

TINA

“I had to go away,” says Victor. “It was killing me. I loved you so much, but T was becoming scarce, and I knew my body would revert when it ran out, at least partially.”

I’d wondered about that. Essential medications, like pain relievers, are becoming hard to find as the rare caches not exposed to the blazing heat of the past four global warming summers are depleted. We’re growing fields of poppies to produce our own opiates, but many once common drugs that require complex manufacturing techniques to produce are almost gone. 

Insulin is hard to produce and has to be refrigerated. The old supply is gone, and there's no more on the way; type one diabetes is now a death sentence again. Type two can be dealt with to a certain extent through diet and exercise, but long-term survival is unlikely. We’ve lost eight people to Diabetes in the 10 months since supplies ran out.

You can’t die from the cessation of hormone therapy, but there’s no alternative medicine solution, and probably no one left trained to perform gender confirmation surgery even if there were. Trans people are stuck with the bodies they were born with. 

“I moved to Little Egg Harbor,” says Victor. “It’s really nice. Not as wired as here, but I like it.”

All this over me? A wave of guilt consumes me. It’s not my fault, of course, but, validating as it is, I hate the thought of Victor having such strong feelings for me that he felt the need to flee 40 miles rather than revert in my presence. 

Which was so foolish. It’s not his body I’m in love with.

Seeming to know what I’m thinking, he says “I just... I knew you liked me, and I really wanted to be with you. But I ran out of T about nine months ago, and I knew you were straight as a board. You couldn’t make love to me if I had a completely female body...”

“Are you really so sure of that?” I say, surprising myself a bit. I’ve been edging closer to experimenting but wasn’t aware I’d made asn affirmative decision.

He sighs. “Tina,  _ I  _ can’t make love to _ you _ \- or anyone - as a woman. It’s not what I am. It feels wrong. I tried a bunch of times before I came out, with men and women, and it just didn’t work. It’s awful having sex when you hate your body.”

I don’t know what to say. The moment I realize it really doesn’t matter to me, he refuses to try it himself - for reasons I completely sympathize with, of course. Dammit, I just can’t win. 

No, that’s not true. I’ve had more wins than I ever imagined possible. It’s Victor who can’t win. Jesus, life sucks sometimes.

“What’s weird is, when I heard about the walkers turning up here, I had to come back. I... I don’t want you to face all this alone.”

“I’m not exactly alone,” I say. “I’m married to five really cool people.” 

Victor raises his eyebrow at this.

“But there’s always room for one more. Mi casa es su casa.”

Victor takes me in his arms. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” I feel his ample breasts against my own, and to what shouldn’t be my surprise at this point, it arouses me. That’s never happened before. I’ve hugged plenty of women and never had this reaction. 

True, I’ve decided that I’m bi-, or at least bi-curious. But that’s not it. I’m aroused because it’s Victor, and I love him.

And goddammit, I  _ will  _ seduce him. Slowly and carefully, I will seduce him, and show him that he can love his body even if it isn’t the right one for him.

Don’t worry, Sancho - I can take that windmill, no problem.

  
  


JESSICA

The Wagstaff schoolyard is ablaze - a funeral pyre for a thousand of our former friends and neighbors. The black cloud of smoke rising from the largely mummified bodies must be visible from a hundred miles away.

It’s also toxic. The bodies are mostly wrapped in plastic. It’s a serious health hazard, but not as much of one as a thousand walkers powered by a hundred thousand bugs.

Before the flames went up, I recited the Kaddish while several believers of other religions uttered their own prayers for the dead. When we were done, we held each other and wept for all that has been lost and all that we fear will be lost in the future. 

Tomorrow, if the seaward wind holds, we do it all again on King’s Head Island, which is a mausoleum, uninhabited by the living.

Of course, there’s the matter of the billions of other corpses littering the planet. And the few million living targets.

What are we going to do? Dear God, what the hell are we going to do?

  
  


LOUISE

Joe Zimmerman is pleased as punch with the mannequin’s hand he’s duct-taped, against medical advice, to his stump. I can’t imagine being so sanguine about having self-amputated an appendage, but the man is unfazed. 

“It’s a little bigger than my old hand,” he says in a thick Brooklyn accent, “but you know what they say about the size of a man’s hands, right? Maybe it’ll have some effect. God knows I could use it.”

We’re sitting in Booth 2 at Bob’s. The place is closed for the foreseeable future, but I whipped us up a few burgers. 

“If nothing else, it’s a conversation starter,” he says. “And speaking of conversation starters, what’s the deal with the bunny ears?”

He doesn’t know me well enough to ask that question, but I find I’m quite willing to answer it.

“Short answer: it’s a security blanket,” I say. “Long answer: maybe some other time.”

“Fair enough,” he says. 

“I suppose I really ought to be able to ditch it at this point,” I say. “But really, if there ever was a time for a security blanket, this is it.”

He smiles warmly at me. He’s a cute old dude. If he were 10, maybe 15 years younger...

“Only Rudy gets to see me without the ears.”

Holy shit, did I just say that out loud? I’ve never told anyone that. What is it about this guy?

He’s just a calming, reassuring presence. Nurturing. That’s it.

“Rudy’s your boyfriend?”

“Husband. We just had our six month anniversary.”

That smile again. “Congratulations. Enjoy every month you’ve got - it’s getting really weird out lately. Bad weird.”

“You are not wrong,” I say. 

We’ve gotten word of walker sightings all over the continent - and that’s just from the two dozen or so outposts we’re in contact with. There are huge uninhabited expanses about which we have very little info, since Howard’s satellites have been concentrating on the areas around known colonies. God knows what’s happening in the places we’re not monitoring.

Even worse, we’ve gotten reports of walkers all over the world via shortwave radio. We’re letting everyone know about our results with liquid nitrogen, but not many people have access to the substance. Mostly, they’re heading for the hills.

Howard says a total of 1007 walkers have been sighted across a hundred and twelve colonies, including ours. There have been over 100 known fatalities, and 32 towns have been completely abandoned. On the positive side, about 20 walkers (ours and 12 more) have been destroyed, mostly by freezing.

In Russia, a few scientists with balls of steel have been studying the bugs close up - mostly dead ones, but also a couple that were alive and biting for a few days. Other than confirming Susmita’s theory that the fuckers are like furnaces on the inside, they haven’t learned much of any practical value. 

Significantly, however, they’ve confirmed that the bugs are not of this earth. What passes for their DNA doesn’t use any of the same proteins as ours - in fact, they’re calling the individual molecules proteins by default. They can’t identify them. They don’t resemble anything organic that we - or at least the Russian scientists in question - are familiar with.

Beyond that, I can’t tell you much - it’s all way over my head. Our local computer scientists are scrambling to adapt their AI software to help Dr. Vassilov and his crew in their research, but they’re struggling - they just don’t have the baseline knowledge of biology, much less genetics, to work from. Mostly, they’ve just been feeding their most advanced AIs piles of biology text and crossing their fingers. They’ve got more immediate problems to deal with.

Such as Anais’ raw materials running out. 

Supplies of her patented super-strong, ultralight polymers - the very skin and bones of her robot creations - seemed plentiful before we needed to build an army out of them. But the 500 gallons or so she concocted at her Princeton lab before everything fell apart are all but gone. There's enough left to make a few dragonfly-bots, if that.

She can make more, but sources of the raw materials - more traditional plastics, and weird chemical agents with incomprehensible names - are spread out across the continent. 

She and a handful of volunteers will make the trek -- from here to central Pennsylvania to Chicago to Houston to Lafayette to Huntsville to Alpharetta to Spartansburg to Norfolk to Baltimore -- in two 18-wheelers, gathering tons of mostly toxic chemicals along the way. They’ll bring their haul to Princeton, fire up whatever weird machinery Anais uses to brew her magical potion, and bring a jesus-load of the completed mixture back to Seymour’s Bay. At which point the mass production of anti-zombie warrior robots will commence.

Meanwhile, the Lara brothers are going to head up to the Bedminster plant to retrieve the machinery necessary to manufacture liquid nitrogen, and get it running here. Then, under Teddy’s direction, with detailed plans from Anais, our dozen most accomplished mechanics will build an assembly line for the creation of liquid-nitrogen “flamethrowers,” enough to arm the entire town and then some.

Of course, that’s if everything goes as planned. Anais and crew will be covering a lot of ground, and there are more and more walkers out there. Even the Lara twins’ trip to Bedminster gives me the shakes to think about. How many brain bugs are out there right now, in search of humans, living or dead, to eviscerate?

“OK,” I say, “let me ask  _ you _ a personal question.”

This elicits an impish grin. “Ask away.”

I pause for effect. “What’s your deal?”

“My ‘deal’?”

“Yeah,” I say, “your deal. I mean, not many guys can chop off their own hand in a fight with an alien monster one day and be joking about it the next. And with all due respect, Joe, you don’t exactly peak my badass-o-meter. You come off a lot more Mr. Kotter than, you know, Rambo. Which is to your credit. But still, who the fuck  _ are _ you?”

He laughs delightedly.

“Definitely not Rambo, that’s for sure. I'm just Joseph Zimmerman, born April 12, 1984 in Brooklyn, New York, third generation science fiction nerd, graduate of SUNY Binghamton, high school english teacher and writer of bad poetry. Before yesterday, I’d only ever killed monsters in Dungeons and Dragons. And even then my characters tended to be bad in a fight. So many campaigns, so many level one Mages dead by the dungeon entrance.

“As for yesterday, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. All I can say is that the bite of that fucking thing was so agonizing that chopping off my hand looked like the less painful option. And it was. It was actually a relief. Also, I guess, to put it in D&D terms, I must have a pretty high Constitution. I managed to do a whole lot, with a reasonably clear head, before going into shock.”

Explaining nothing. “That’s my point, though. It’s not just your ‘constitution.’ Who goes around tidying up after dismembering themselves? I believe you that it was less painful than the bite, but you must still have been in incredible pain. Who has that kind of cool in that kind of situation?”

“Me, apparently,” he chuckles. “Look, you’ve lived through the last four years. I don’t know  _ precisely  _ what you’ve experienced, but it’s probably more than you ever thought you could handle. Even if you haven’t had a personal brush with death, you’ve called on reserves of strength you never knew you had inside you. Because you had no choice. 

“Well, I didn’t have a choice, either. The hand had to go. Does it help if I tell you it was the most horrifying, traumatic, gut-wrenching, mind-mangling thing I’ve ever done, and I’ll be having nightmares about it until at least a decade after they plant me? 

“And afterward, again, I had no choice - I had to get a tourniquet on the stump, and fast, before I lost too much blood to function. It was either keep my head or die. I didn’t want to die.

“And frankly, once you’ve made it through chopping off your own hand and getting a tourniquet around the stump all by yourself, pretty much everything else is cake. 

"You want to know why I wasn’t in too much pain to function? Ask my endorphins. Soldiers in battle suffer awful injuries and manage to keep going all the time, running on adrenaline. That’s what it’s  _ for _ . 

“It’s just that I don’t look like an NPC from Call of Duty 5, so you’re experiencing some cognitive dissonance. If it helps, think of me more like one of those mothers who somehow manages to lift a car off of their kid with one hand and pull them out from under it with the other.”

I look at him for a good long time.

“Also, I’ve been gluten-free since 2019, so...” he deadpans.

“Ha. Don’t tell my dad that,” I say. “He firmly believes gluten was the victim of a smear campaign by the same people who” I airquote “‘sold soy-flavored water to stupid vegetarians and called it milk.’”

“A wise man, your father,” says Joe. 

“He is, actually.” 

Now I go missing for about a minute, thinking about my dad, about daddy-daughter stuff, about wonderful moments with him from my childhood, and about the years of wonderful moments we didn’t get to have because the world ended on us. I go though the all too familiar stages of grief over that loss. I have my five thousandth Reality Check Moment.

Joe watches this happen with infinite patience, his wry grin taking on a shade of melancholy. We’ve all learned to wait it out when our companions get lost in themselves. Even after four years, it’s a very common occurrence. In fact, I think it’s happening more these days. So many conversations have gone quietly off the rails in the last few months, it’s like the early days, when we were all still in shock.

Finally, Joe says “You okay, kid?”

“What? Yeah, sorry.”

“Don’t be. I took it as an opportunity to disappear up my  _ own _ navel for a few minutes. Very enlightening. And en- _ lint _ -ening.”

“Jeez,” I say, “is my brother writing your one-liners all of a sudden?”

“Sorry, I can’t resist a good play on words. Or a bad one, for that matter. The head of the English department at SUNY Binghamton almost kicked me out of school over a particularly bad pun once. People get so stuffy when it comes to masters’ theses.”

I take this in for a moment. 

“You’re not joking, are you?”

“Nope. Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the pun. Unless you have the encyclopedic knowledge of Chaucer necessary to get it.”

“Chaucer - he’s the guy who wrote The Canterburger Tales, right?”

He chuckles. “Canterbury. But yeah.”

“I knew that,” I say. “I just wanted to make you laugh.”

“Huh.” he says. “Do I seem like I need cheering up?”

Good point. “Actually, no, oddly enough. I guess I’m just trying to suppress my instincts, which are to see if I can make you break down and actually be upset about your hand like a reasonable person.”

Why the hell am I telling him this? What is it about Joe Zimmerman that makes me want to be relentlessly honest and kind? And not just to him -- if there were someone else sitting with us, I’d be just as vulnerable with them. This is bad.

“When I was a kid, ” I go on, “I was pretty much the personification of the phrase “‘malicious glee.’”

Joe laughs and nods. “Yes, I can see that. Completely. That’s one of the things I like about you, actually. The moment we met, I thought ‘I can almost  _ see  _ the little devil on this kid’s shoulder. I gotta get to know both of them.’”

“Seriously?” I stammer, pissed at myself for being phased. “I’m that transparent?”

“Nah,” he says, a bit too smug for my tastes. “I’m that perceptive. I taught junior high and high school students for 15 years. I learned to spot the troublemakers. They were always my favorites - a preference that made my job a lot harder and caused me no end of tsuris. But the truth is - and I hate to break this to you - you’re a type. An unusual one, to be sure, but a type.”

“ _ You’re _ a type,” I half-whisper. How dare he.

“You better believe it. I’d say I clock somewhere between Woody Allen and, as you mentioned, Mr. Kotter. Gabe Kaplan. But I pack a few surprises, such as my inner Rambo. Of course, you have your own surprises. Like the fact that you’re even more of a softie on the inside than you are a badass on the outside.” He sees my expression change. “Hey, that’s a compliment. And it’s not me being psychic; it was true of every troublemaker I ever taught. The harder the outer shell, the softer the chewy nougat center.

“What makes you unusual - and this is partly instinct and partly the sense I get from hearing you talk about your family - is that unlike most troublemakers, you had a really good childhood. You weren’t poorly treated, just the opposite. You love your family. You had nothing to act out over, but you did anyway - so it’s got to be innate: you’re a troublemaker to the core. Good for you.” He lifts his water glass in toast.

“Good for me? Being a troublemaker?” I ask.

“Well behaved women seldom make history,” he says. “And you can quote me quoting Laura Thatcher Ulrich on that.”

I do my best not to let show just how much his assessment pleases me, and probably fail. “Do you even think there’s any history left to make? Seems to me it’s all over. I mean, I was hopeful for a while, but now with walkers popping up all over the place. I think we’re pretty much terminally fucked. End of the line.”

Joe’s cheerful expression fades and he becomes deadly serious - the effect, being without precedent, is jolting, as is the realization of just how much gravitas the funny little man is capable of. He leans across the table and takes my hand, and stares into my eyes as he says “Don’t be so sure, Louise. Human beings are tough motherfuckers. I know we’re all too tired for this, and it seems like too much after everything else that’s happened. But you’ve got the genes of a billion years of survivors in every cell in your body. We all do. We are the ones who survived  _ everything _ , every mass extinction in the history of the planet. We don’t go down without a fight - and at least this time around, there’s actually something we  _ can _ fight.

“Nobody fucks with humanity and walks away without a serious limp and massive blood loss. We’ll make it. And you’ll have some incredible stories to tell your grandkids.”

It takes me a moment to catch my breath. He’s still holding my hand and staring into my eyes, but his expression has softened -- he seems to realize that he’s been overdoing it, however sincerely. He releases my hand and sits up.

“Sorry,” he says. 

But I’m still staring at him. “No, don’t be. That was... reassuring, in a kind of ‘we will fight them on the beaches,’ calm before the storm way.” I smile and put my hand back in his.

“Um,” he says, flustered. Which makes two of us. “What’s this?”

That’s an excellent question. What, Louise, is this?

We’re friends holding hands. Nothing odd about that. Except my heart is racing and I’m pretty sure his is, too. 

Aw, crap, I’m an idiot. I’m obviously attracted to him and it’s clearly mutual. 

I’ve never had a thing for an old guy before. I mean, he’s not  _ old _ old. He’s not even as old as my dad. But he’s close enough. Does that turn me on? After a brief system diagnostic, I’m glad to say it doesn’t, inherently. So what is it? What am I seeing in this man?

He’s not much to look at. Short. Skinny, but not in a sleek, slinky way, just slight. Receding hairline, features ethnic but not in a striking way. Goatee that doesn’t really work, but is probably an improvement on his unadorned face. Whatever I’m reacting to, it’s not his sheer animal magnetism.

On the other hand, he  _ is _ supremely self-confident without being arrogant about it. Smart as hell, funny, poised, charming. He carries himself, honestly, like someone way more traditionally attractive. Rudy’s become less insecure over the years, but I don’t think he’ll ever have Joe Zimmerman’s poise, my sweetie. 

But is that enough reason to fall into someone else’s arms? Isn’t Rudy enough?

Yes. Yes he is. 

But there’s nothing wrong with having more than enough, right?

_ Rudy has Jodi. Why shouldn’t I have Joe? _

“What does it look like?” I ask.

“It looks like a hot young chick is flirting with me. Which I sure hope she is, or this is about to get really awkward.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “She is.”

Joe chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, I’m touched. I haven’t had much luck with the ladies since 99 point 999 percent of them died.”

I have no idea how to respond to this.

“Too soon?” he says.

“Much,” I say. “But in a void, yeah, that’s pretty fucking funny.”

“Thanks. So what now? No, wait, I’m pretty sure you mentioned a husband about two minutes ago.”

“Yeah, well...” I say, tentatively. I guess I haven’t quite gotten used to the idea. “I mean, he has a girlfriend -- which is totally cool, by the way. We’re, what’s the term? Ethically non-monogamous.”

“Most people are, these days. I just wanted to be sure.”

“What,” I say, amused, “you were afraid I was so bowled over by your raw animal magnetism that I spontaneously decided to cheat on my husband?”

He hits me with a rakish grin. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Oh, really?”

His grin returns to its usual wry configuration. “Yeah. It would be the second. And in all honesty, the first time, I still had a full head of hair. And a couple of muscles.”

“Mmm. Sexy.”

“You’re being facetious, but I was, believe it or not.”

“I believe it,” I say. 

“So what now?” says Joe, sans wry grin, his sincerity disarming.

“Well, um...” 

“No rush. One of the nice things about being a non-trivial percentage of as old as fuck is that you’re not a slave to your dick anymore. We can hang out, get to know each other, as long as you want, no expectations. Honestly, you don’t seem like you’re sure about this.”

“Maybe not,” I say, “but I kind of  _ am _ in a rush. It’s getting weird out there. Bad weird.”

“As a wise man once said.”

“Come on,” I say. “Race you to my bedroom.”

“Race, huh?” says Joe. “I dunno. My asthma. How far is it?”


	12. Life is Good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little Louise-driven smut, a sort of calm before the storm. This was fun, though I'm not particularly happy with the writing.
> 
> It may be a while before I post again. I've got my work cut out for me, figuring how to write effective action scenes, and deciding who lives, who dies, and who tells their story.
> 
> See you on the other side of the war.

LOUISE  
As we exit the restaurant, we bump into Rudy.

“Oh, there you are,” says Rudy. “I...oh.” He’s noticed that we’re holding hands. “Uh, hello sir, I’m, um...”

“Rudy,” I say, a little flustered myself, “this is Joe Zimmerman.”

“A...a pleasure.” Rudy extends his hand. He’s a leftie, so he winds up shaking Joe’s improvised mannequin-hand prosthetic. “Oh! Uh, sorry. Wow. So, you’re the guy who took on that bug, right?” Rudy’s admiration for Joe’s bad-assery puts him on more solid social ground, and he calms down. “Amazing. I like the new hand, by the way. Very stylish.”

“Thanks,” says Joe. “I’m thinking of chopping off the other hand so I can have a matched set.”

We all laugh at this, then fall silent for a little too long. After a few moments of tension, we all decide to break the silence simultaneously, then all stop short at the same time.

This is ridiculous. I gesture to Rudy and Joe to remain silent, take a deep breath, and dive into the deep end.

“Rudy, Joe and I are very attracted to each other and were just about to act on it. But we gave each other veto power. If you have a strong objection, we can discuss it, and then, if you still object, we’ll break it off.”

Rudy’s clearly uncomfortable, but he’s trying. He laughs nervously. “Why would I object? I mean, you didn’t have a problem with me and Jodi. Doesn’t seem fair for me to object, does it.”

“That’s not how it works, Rude. If I’d had a problem with Jodi, I’d have said. And, not to undermine my own case, but the situation is a little different. We’ve both known Jodi since third grade. I just met Joe an hour ago, and you just met him about 60 seconds ago. It would be reasonable for you to want us both to get to know him better first.”

Rudy shakes his head. “I trust you, Lou. It feels weird, I’ll admit, but that’s on me.” He hugs me, and gives me a peck on the cheek. Then, to my surprise, he hugs Joe briefly, surprising him, but clearly not making him uncomfortable. 

“Take good care of her,” says Rudy.

“I will,” says Joe.

“Um, okay, then,” says Rudy, with forced casualness. “I’ll leave you to it. I’ll go hang out with Jodi and the gang.”

He heads for his Tesla, which is about three Teslas down from the one directly outside our door, but I stop him.

“Hey - hey. One more thing.” I kiss him thoroughly and passionately. After we catch our breaths, I say “there’s always more where that came from. Always.”

Rudy smiles at me, winks, then remembers that he’s terrified of the bugs or walkers that could show up at any moment and dashes for his car.

I take Joe’s hand again and say “shall we?” but give him no time to answer, dragging him inside, through the living room area (causing a few eyebrows to rise), down the stairs and into my and Rudy’s room.

Compared to my old room, with its Anime-chic decor, my current abode is a masterpiece of creative adulting. The anime posters are strictly from the most respected titles - Miyazaki films, mostly - and are all framed. My old toys - the ones I most value, anyway - are displayed knick-knack style on an IKEA shelf (which is not to say I don’t still take them down and play with them from time to time). Also adorning the walls are prints of more traditional paintings. The Van Goghs lend an air of class, the Escher prints more of a college dorm feel - except that they are actually framed as well.

The furniture is all tasteful blond-wood IKEA pieces, including the king bed that dominates the room (Rude and I both like to spread way out when we sleep, and tend to toss and turn).

Until Joe notices it, I completely forget that it’s not normal for a bedroom’s walls to be completely covered with acoustical tiles.

“So,” he says, sliding his finger across the nearest tile, “do you do a podcast from in here, or should I wear earplugs?” 

I feel myself turning beet red. “Podcast,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Movie reviews. All the latest Hollywood blockbusters, plus interviews with indie directors.”

He kisses me gently, taking my still crimson face in his hands. “Send me a link,” he says.

He’s a good kisser. 

He wraps his arms around me. One hand makes its way up my neck to my hat. He does not attempt to remove it - remembering, I’m sure, that I mentioned that only Rudy sees me without it. Rather, his fingers find their way under the fabric and begin stroking and massaging the back of my head. It doesn’t have the same overwhelming effect as it used to, back when Rudy discovered the secret of the scalp-gasm, but I’m still tremendously sensitive under the old felt cap, and I shudder.

Joe stops immediately. “I’m sorry,” he says, “is under the hat off limits?”

I shake my head. “Don’t stop. Don’t take it off, but don’t stop.”

I find myself moaning and shaking in his embrace as we stand together, a few feet from the bed. I’d normally be horizontal (or on top) by this point, but I don’t want to change a single thing that’s happening. Bolts of electricity are shooting from my scalp, through my body to directly between my legs, where it throbs with every movement of Joe’s hand across my head.

I find myself standing on my toes, leaning into his gentle touch. I force my eyes open and gaze at Joe’s face. His expression is a mixture of amusement and enthrallment. “Jesus you’re beautiful,” he says. “And weird,” he continues, in admiration. “You are marvelously weird.” 

“You have no idea,” I gasp, shutting my eyes tight. I’m very close.

He kisses me and kisses me until I withdraw my mouth and clamp it onto his neck to muffle my scream, which goes on and on as waves of ecstasy flow from my scalp to my toes and back, over and over. 

When the orgasm begins to recede, Joe spins me around, across the short distance to the bed, until he is sitting on the edge and I am in his lap, facing him, my legs straddling his hips. He kisses my neck and holy shit, I’m doing a sex scene. I said I wouldn’t do that.

Fuck it, I didn’t put it in writing. Well, I mean, I did, but it’s not like I had it notarized or anything.

We reach out simultaneously to remove each other’s shirts, leaving me half naked - my girls are small, and I don’t usually wear a bra. I notice that some of Joe’s chest hair is gray, like his temples. Weird. Well, not weird, just different. Rudy barely has any chest hair at all, and it’s very light, like the rest of his hair (naturally).

To Joe’s delight, I rub my chest against his. His expression is...complicated. On the one hand, he’s very relaxed about sex; at the same time, I clearly excite him tremendously. I notice that he’s trembling with pleasure, as I am. He also is quite obviously very pleased with himself for bedding a hot young thing.

Well, he should be. I _am_ fucking hot. Slim but not skinny. Sleek legs. Cute little tittes. Adorable features. Four years of being worshipped by Rudy have done wonders for my self esteem.

But nerdy, balding, middle-aged Joe Zimmerman has no doubt that he’s worthy of my erotic attentions. Unlike many geeky guys, he doesn’t have an inferiority complex and a chip on his shoulder to go with it. It’s true what they say - confidence is sexy. So are guys that make you laugh.

Joe’s appearance is irrelevant; he’s hot, too.

He leans back until he’s flat on the mattress, pulling me down with him. He pulls my shorts and undies down as far as he can with me straddling him. I return the favor. We realize we’re not in an ideal position to get naked, so we stand again, and let our trous drop with an assist from gravity.

Before we go to the bed again, I reach for my side table and pull out a strip of condoms. Good lord - what are we going to do when these run out or all expire - go back to animal intestine tissue sheaths. Not particularly effective. Also gross.

For the moment though, we’re covered. Or, rather, Joe is.

He struggles a bit with the condom, chuckling. “Jesus, it’s been so long. I hope I remember how to do it.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s just like fucking a bicycle.”

This breaks him up. I’m worried for a moment that as he laughs heartily, he’ll lose his erection.

Nope. He’s still ready for action. I guess it really has been a long time.

I shove him playfully at the bed. He hits it moving backward and falls until he’s in the same position as before - lying back on the mattress, lower legs hanging down, feet on the floor. He maneuvers himself to the middle of the bed and lies back again, and in a second I’m on top of him.

We haven’t had much foreplay this round, but I’m pretty worked up anyway. Why wait? I lower myself down and take him inside me. 

It feels...different. Wonderful, but different. I’m not going to get into a crass discussion of dicks at the moment, but let’s just say Joe’s...proportions are different than Rudy’s, and it changes the experience. And the difference attracts Miss Thing’s full attention. And mine. My movements are not the same as when I’m on top of Rudy, nor are Joe’s movements under me.

I find I’m moving faster to keep up with Joe’s thrusts, and adjusting for the thrusts that go slightly to the side, not just straight up and down, touching parts of my insides that don’t usually get as much attention. 

The result is a sort of sensory overload I was not expecting from this sweet little older guy, and it’s not long before I find myself barrelling toward another climax. Which is good, because the poor guy really hasn’t gotten laid in a long time, and is very close, himself. It’s not long before he moans and arches his back, exploding into me (well, into the condom, but into me by proxy, I suppose). I’m not quite there, yet, but closing in.

I expect him to apologise, to say something along the lines of “sorry, it’s just been so long. That doesn’t usually happen.” but there’s that confidence thing again. He lifts me off of him (easily - He’s stronger than he looks), places me back down with my crotch in his face, and goes to town. In less than a minute, I’m screaming again, this time with nothing to muffle the sound. He laughs and says “Holy shit” as my orgasm bounces off the acoustical tiles Gene so kindly installed a few years back.

I slide back down his body, leaving a trail of juices. We kiss, and I taste myself, a flavor I’m used to from all the times Rudy has feasted on me. I reflect that Joe’s cunnilingus technique - fast, almost hummingbird wing-speed darts of the tongue in all directions - is also different from Rudy’s slow, deep movements. 

And both work equally well. A girl could get used to this.

“God, you’re amazing,” Joe gasps. I can hear that he’s asthmatic like Rudy, but not nearly as severely. He’s smiling beatifically - a completely different expression than the cat-that-ate-the-canary expression Rudy tends to wear after our trysts. I think Rudy has never stopped being amazed that he’s actually had sex with someone, even after four extremely active years.

Joe is not amazed, just pleased. 

I lie down next to him, giving him the opportunity to get rid of the condom and wipe himself off with some kleenex. 

He returns to the bed, he lies on his side, facing me, and I turn to face him. He shakes his head in wonderment.

“I can tell you’ve done this a lot for someone your age,” says Joe. “You’re totally at ease, and you had no trouble adjusting to a new lover. I’ve been with women more than twice your age who weren’t as skilled. I know that doesn’t sound like pillow talk, kind of a cold assessment, but I’m just expressing admiration. You’re incredible.”

“You’re not half bad, yourself, old man.” I can tell right away that I am going to enjoy teasing this guy, and that, from his reaction, he enjoys being teased. 

On the other hand, this is not going to be a goddess/worshiper relationship like I have with Rudy. He may find me “incredible,” but he’s not the worshipping type. He sees me as an equal - which is actually pretty cool, given the age difference.

“Yeah,” I say. “Rudy and I started when we were 14, right after the plague started. Eat, drink and be merry, right?”

We kiss.

Joe whistles. “14. Wow. Rudy’s one lucky guy. I was still figuring out how to whack it at that age.” He chuckles.

“I’m lucky, too,” I say. “Rudy’s a great lover - was from the very beginning.” I laugh at a memory. “You know, the first time he made me come - it was a scalp-gasm - he forgot to breathe. Almost passed out. It was scary at the time, but hilarious in retrospect. He was so gobsmacked, his autonomic functions started to shut down.”

“Well, your under-the-hat erogenous zone is definitely a new one on me. I think I may have forgotten to breathe for a second. What’s the deal with your scalp?”

“It’s not complicated. I’ve worn this hat - or one like it - every moment of my life since I was about 3, except in the shower, so I’m really sensitive to touch up there. Still, that first scalp-gasm surprised the hell out of me, too. I did not see it coming, pun not intended.”

“Do you have any other unusual erogenous zones I should know about? ‘The more you know,’ you know?”

“Nah,” I say,. “Just the usual ones. Back of the knee...” He strokes me there, and I hum with pleasure. “Inner thigh...” His hand slides up to near the top of my inner thigh, just barely touching it with his fingertips. It drives me crazy. He keeps this up for a while, a positive feedback loop.

It’s at a point like this that I’d grab Rudy and roll him on top of me, but Joe is two and a half times Rudy’s and my age. He may not be ready to go again so soon.

I’ve always thought it was a shame young people were discouraged from having sex. I mean, what’s a better time? You can have So. Much. Sex.

I reach down to discover that Joe is hard as a rock, which is, frankly, quite flattering. I grab him and roll him on top of me. Instantly, he’s almost inside me, but stops short. “Condom,” he says. Good man. He wraps his erection in precious, pregnancy-preventing, disease-blocking latex and jumps on top of me. 

He’s poised to plunge into me, but changes his mind. He scooches down a bit and kisses my breasts, then licks my nipples with the same fast, darting motion he used on my clit. It’s equally effective and, again, completely different from Rudy’s slow-burn approach. Soon I’m shaking and writhing and moaning beneath him. 

No, not moaning. Making a sort of “nnnnnnnnn” sound, like a hum but with a different consonant. This is new. I’ve never made this sound before. Vive la difference. 

Sweet Jesus, I’ve got to get Joe and Rudy in bed with me at the same time. The sheer mathematical possibilities...

Still nibbling on my breasts, Joe reaches down between my legs and teases me, caressing my inner thighs, and slowly, gradually getting closer to my...

I can’t take it anymore. I reach down, grab his hand, and guide his fingers to just the right spot.

In a matter of moment, I feel like I’m going to come again, and soon, so I grab his hand again and, panting, say “wait.” When I’ve caught my breath, I go on: “fuck me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Joe, and slams into me. Repeatedly. But in a controlled manner. He’s definitely going for fucking my brains out, but gently. That Tenacious D song - and the accompanying video - flashes through my head.

Well, this is new too. It’s just a teeny bit rough - he’s holding me down by the upper arms - which is definitely not Rudy’s style. But he’s holding back, too. He’s making sure not to put a lot of weight on my arms, and while he’s thrusting deeply into me, he’s not trying to slam into my cervix or anything. He is, in fact, making a point of entering me at an angle that stimulates my clit - a technique I expect he’s picked up to compensate for being kind of small (not that i’m complaining. The motion of his ocean is more than sufficient. It wasn’t even an issue at all when I was on top).

Again, all of these differences wake my senses and bring me right to the edge - which he senses, and pulls back, slowing down and not going as deep.

“What the fuck, Joe,?!” I say. “I was almost there.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Do this a few more times and you’ll come so hard you forget your own name.”

Great. He wants to get all tantric on me. Which is a nice thought, but Miss Thing is screaming and threatening to go on strike if we don’t meet her demands.

No, wait, she’s quieting down. I’m quivering, but not frustrated. My whole body is warm and cozy on the inside. I feel like a lobster covered in melted butter - I mean, without the whole being boiled alive in my own carapace first thing.

Maybe there’s something to this tantric stuff.

He turns me over and kisses and caresses his way down my back. When he gets to a certain point, I say “hey, are you into butt stuff? Because I’m really not. I mean really not.”

“Don’t worry. That’s not one of my kinks,” he says, but he does lick around the edges on his way down to his destination, where he starts eating me out from behind. Waves of warmth radiate out from Miss Thing (who is one happy camper at the moment) throughout my lower body. I raise myself up on my hands and knees, and as I again approach orgasm, Joe stops what he’s doing and shifts to pay attention to my inner thighs. He doesn’t lick - sensing, I think, that even that would put me over the top - instead massaging me there and working his way down to my feet.

Again, Miss Thing objects in the strongest possible terms, but in a few moments she decides to take a professional interest in what Joe is building her up to. We’ve never done anything like this with Rudy, and she’s frankly very curious.

Joe now begins to caress and kiss (“cariss,” as my brother would say) his way back up my body. He stops for a moment between my legs and brings me just to the edge before continuing upward, and I arch my back. He reaches up and around until his hands are cupped on my breasts, and he pulls back until I’m standing up on my knees. He takes the same position and, kissing my neck, he enters Miss Thing from behind.

It’s a little awkward, due to his size, but after a minute or so of rather pleasurable awkwardness, he pushes me gently back down to my hands and knees. 

This works better. I don’t often do it in La Position de la Chiên, because Rudy’s not really into it - he wants to see my face the entire time - but it does feel very good. We go at it quickly, almost desperately - it occurs to me that Joe has been holding back his climaxes, too - until I’m so close I’m already starting to scream.

Then he stops again. But before I can cry out in protest, he turns me over and enters me again, missionary-style; which, as basic as it is, is still my favorite.

It’s only a few seconds before we’re both roaring. I want to look in his eyes, but mine are slammed shut as I ride out a brain-destroying orgasm. It goes on and on. I feel Joe pumping inside me, over and over. I can’t hear him over my own screams and the ringing in my own ears, but from his thrashing, I can tell he’s having a monster climax, himself. 

Eventually, when my screaming - and subsequent moaning - have died down (though my eyes are still tightly shut), I hear Joe say “Good God, that was...”

But I cut him off. “Shhhh!” I say.

“What?” he asks.

“Still coming.”

Eventually, I let him speak. 

“Man, oh, man,” he says, still breathing heavily, “I always wanted to try that. Never found a woman patient enough.” He shakes his head. “God damn, I’ve never come like that before. Ever. Not even close. How are you doing? I was afraid I broke you there, for a moment.”

He’s propped up on his shoulder facing me. I’m lying sprawled on the bed, not even a pillow beneath my head, insanely comfortable. Everything feels wonderful. Every movement elicits an aftershock, sending shivers of pleasure through my body.

“I’m doing great,” I say. “Hey, if you want to do that Sting thing sometime, where you withhold orgasm for like an entire day, I might be up for it. Or maybe not. This melted my brain - it’s still re-congealing, like the liquid metal terminator, but into the shape of a smiley emoticon.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure I could survive sex any better than that.” He gazes at me with that smile again. “JEsus Christ, you are, by a wide margin, the cutest object in the solar system, you know that?” He strokes my body all over, but with no erotic intention. Still, the aftershocks...

He boops my nose. Which is the last thing I remember before I fall blissfully to sleep, thinking of how I’m going to describe all this to Rudy, and how turned on he’s going to be by it. 

Life is good...


	13. A Pregnant Pause

LOUISE

“Best sex ever, huh?”

OK, maybe I shouldn’t have put it that way. Rudy is - understandably - bristling at the idea that an older, more experienced man rocked my world better than he ever has. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, and you’d think the probably two thousand screaming orgasms he’s given me over the past four years would have sufficiently bolstered his male ego; but to be fair, this is uncharted territory for him.

“I’m not saying Joe’s better than you; I’m saying we should try this tantric thing. It would be even more amazing with  _ you _ .”

“I know, I know. I get that,” he says. “I should be fine with it. I’d be a hypocrite not to be. I mean, Jodi’s been opening  _ me _ up sexually...”

“And it’s been awesome,” I say. And it has. Rudy’s been a dynamo in bed lately - still worshipful, mind you, but using a wider sexual vocabulary to express it.

He directs a wan smile at me. He’s still uncomfortable, but he can’t deny it -- it’s been great for him, too.

“But...?” I say.

“But... oh, fuck me, I _ am _ a hypocrite,” he says. “I’m jealous. Really, really jealous. And it’s not about him. I’d be jealous no matter who it was. Possessive.”

Dammit, I knew it. He wasn’t really ready to open up the relationship. No - he was perfectly ready to open up his end of it, just not mine. He’s being an asshole. 

But he’s self-aware, and honest about his feelings. That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about him. He was this way when he was  _ nine _ . An emotional savant.

We can work through this.

“Rudy, we don’t have to do this. We can be monogamous. It’s no skin off my nose, or any other part of my anatomy.”

“But that’s the thing,” he says. “If I had to give up Jodi, I’d be crushed. I’m being completely unfair, and I know it. But the thought of you with someone else makes me crazy. Not intellectually, but in my gut. What do we do?”

“What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?  _ You _ will just have to get used to it. And you will. Honestly. Your emotions will catch up with your principles. They always do.”

He sighs. “You’re right, but right now, it hurts. I know I’m being a jerk, but it hurts.”

I have a brilliant idea. The kind of brilliant idea that blows up in my face half the time, but I’m willing to roll the dice. 

“Let’s have Joe over for dinner tonight.” Rudy flinches, but I persist. “I just think if you get to know him, if he’s your friend, too, it will all feel more natural.”

“I don’t know, Lou. It would be awkward. And not regular awkward -- we’re talking at least 55 kilo-cringes. That’s 20 more than a lethal dose!”

His sense of humor is reasserting itself. He’s already starting to adjust, he just doesn’t know it. 

“You can do this. Trust me, you’ll like him, and you’ll be comfortable with him. He’s a great guy.”

Rudy bows his head. 

“Dammit, Rudy, you’re my primary. Hell, you’re my everything. I have fun with Joe, but I live for you. Nothing can change that. Joe is not a threat. Get over yourself, you stupid, beautiful idiot!”

“I know I should, but...”

“I kept my hat on.”

He cocks his head like a confused dog.

“Only you see me completely naked, Rude. Only you, no one else.”

He’s still confused, but a hint of a smile appears on his face.

“Get it?” I say.

Now he smiles sheepishly.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” He hugs me with his whole body, and kisses the bejeezus out of me for what feels like an hour. Somehow, by the time we’re done, I’m naked - completely, my hat discarded on the floor. Rudy is naked, too, wearing only the expression I recognize as the precursor to wild, animalimalistic, brain-melting Rudy-dominant sex. 

He whispers “show me how it’s done.”

Yeah, life really is good.

  
  


TINA

“Knock-knock,” I say to Mac, out of nowhere.

He chuckles. “Who’s there.”

“I’m pregnant,” I say.

“‘I’m Pregnant’ who?” he asks.

I stare at him.

“Oh,” is his understated response. Good. I was hoping he wouldn’t freak out. “Do you know who the father is?”

A reasonable question. Mac is certainly my most frequent lover, but my love is a gift to all the men of the revolution. It could be either of the twins’. 

And the odds are extremely low, but it could also be Rudy’s.

  
  


LOUISE

What!!?

  
  


RUDY

Oh, shit.

  
  


LOUISE

Seriously? What the fuck, Rude? What the actual fuck? 

  
  


RUDY

It was just one time.

  
  


LOUISE

Great, so I’ll only have to kill guys once each.

  
  


TINA

Okay, just calm down.

  
  


LOUISE

Okay, just go fuck yourself.

  
  


TINA

Dammit, Louise, you’re acting like you’re monogamous all of a sudden.

  
  


LOUISE

You’re my fucking sister! You’re off limits!

  
  


TINA

Why?

  
  


LOUISE

You know why.

  
  


TINA

No, honestly, I don’t. Why am I off limits? And think before you speak. 

  
  


LOUISE

...

  
  


RUDY

Look...

  
  


TINA and LOUISE

Shut up, Rudy.

  
  


RUDY

Shutting up.

  
  


LOUISE

I don’t... I mean, isn’t it obvious? It’s just a rule. Right? You don’t fuck your sister-in-law. You shouldn’t even be  _ attracted  _ to your sister-in-law.

  
  


TINA

Isn’t that just a holdover from monogamy? One of the typical ways that men have always cheated on their wives? But that’s within the context of a marriage where sleeping with anyone other than your spouse is cheating. 

  
  


LOUISE   
It’s too intimate. It feels incestuous.

  
  


TINA

I’m not related to Rudy, Louise.

  
  


LOUISE

I’m not a fucking idiot, T. It’s just...wrong.

  
  


TINA

Why, Lou? 

  
  


LOUISE

Because I don’t want it! That’s enough.

  
  


TINA

Did you ever tell Rudy that?

  
  


LOUISE

No. But he shouldn’t have assumed it was okay. He should have at least called and asked.

  
  


TINA

It just happened, Louise.

LOUISE

How?! When?! Why?!

  
  


TINA

When? About a month ago, when we were all too terrified of walkers to think about sex. I thought. How and why? Rudy was visiting Jodi. He spent an hour in her room, just holding her until she could sleep. Afterward, we hung out in my room, talking. About stuff. Things. Everything. Mostly about how fucking terrified we were. 

At one point, the question came up of what had happened to all the Burning Viking Ship sex, and we admitted we were both really horny and kind of going crazy from temporary celibacy. And he admitted he’d been having fantasies about me...

  
  


LOUISE

Grrrrr...

  
  


TINA’

...to his own surprise. And I admitted that I’d given him a thought or two recently, and, well, nature took its course.

  
  


LOUISE

Fuck fuck fuck fuck. 

  
  


TINA

Do you want me to apologize?

  
  


LOUISE

Yes!!

  
  


TINA

Well, too bad. Get over yourself.

  
  


RUDY

I’ll apologize.

  
  


TINA and LOUISE

Shut up, Rudy.

  
  


RUDY

Jeez.

  
  


[Silence]

[More silence]

RUDY

Look...

  
  


TINA and LOUISE

Shut up, Ru...!

  
  


RUDY

No! Cut it out. I’m one third of this triangle and I have the right to speak.

  
  


TINA and LOUISE

...

  
  


RUDY

Alright, then. 

Louise, I’ll admit it. I knew you’d probably be upset if you found out. But I was pent up and thinking with my dick, and I rationalized it away. Bullshitted myself. I can’t speak for Tina, but by our own standards, I cheated on you. I’m sorry.

  
  


LOUISE

Thank you for your honesty Rudy. I promise your death will be swift and painless.

  
  


TINA

Dammit, Rudy, don’t cover for me. 

  
  


LOUISE

Wait, what?

  
  


TINA

I talked him into it, Lou. I mean, it wasn’t hard to do, but I convinced him it was fine. Told him it wasn’t against the letter of the law, that you’d actually be glad it was me and not some random chick. As if it was five years ago and there were any “random” chicks out there. I told him what he wanted to hear, Lou.

  
  


RUDY

It’s still my responsibility. I’m her husband. The relationship at risk was mine. I knew better. 

  
  


LOUISE

Fine. Rudy: quick, painless death. Tina: life in prison. 

  
  


TINA

Lou, get over it. It was one time. We needed it. It was no big deal. Honestly, it was nice--

  
  


LOUISE

Aaaaaagh!

  
  


TINA

Oh, chill out. It was nice. We were happy for an hour in the middle of a week of terror.

  
  


LOUISE

An hour? You said it was one time. 

  
  


TINA

[Sigh] It was. One time, and about 45 minutes morem conversation before we fell asleep. It was  _ nice _ . Screw your “agreement” with Rudy, you should be happy for us. We found comfort in the middle of insanity - comfort our existing lovers couldn’t give us at the time.

  
  


LOUISE

That doesn’t make it right.

  
  


TINA

It should.

  
  


LOUISE

Ugh. Dammit. Okay, there will be a brief recess, and the jury will return with their verdict.

  
  


RUDY

No, Lou, enough already. Let’s just get on with our goddamn lives!

  
  


LOUISE

Mr. Stieblitz, one more outburst like that and I’ll have you removed from this courtroom.

  
  


RUDY

Oh, fuck you, Judge Judy, this isn’t a courtroom. This is serious. You wanna play dom in this relationship, fine. I enjoy watching you be imperious. But I’m sick of being paraded around on an invisible leash! It was fun as a sort of half-joke, but I’m sick of the play-acting. I love you, but I don’t “worship” you. Not if you’re going to keep taking it  _ literally _ . We’re equals, or we’re not a couple. And God help me, because I can’t imagine not being with you. But I want to be with  _ you _ not some goddess/judge/jury/executioner persona.

I fucked up. Fine. But there’s not going to be a death penalty, not even as a joke. I’m not going to do your chores for a month, I’m not going to go stand in the corner and think about what I’ve done. I’m going to apologize - in fact, I already have. You can accept that apology, or not. If not, I’ll go move in with Jodi until you’ve calmed down enough to forgive me. And if you never do -- well that would be pretty fucking stupid.

  
  


LOUISE

...

  
  


TINA

I’m going to get back to my story now, okay? You guys work things out. 

\----

“No, Mac, I don’t know who it is. I mean, it’s probably you, just mathematically. But obviously, we’d need to do a blood test to be sure. Or just wait ‘til the kid is born and check its skin tone.”

I can’t tell what Mac is feeling at the moment. He’s obviously thinking pretty hard, but his emotions are unreadable. 

Until he smiles.

“I have to admit I like the idea of having a kid with you,” he says. “With all of us, really. We’ve got a village, we can raise a child.”

“It  _ is _ a charming idea,” I agree.

“Still -- wait, do you even want to have a child in the first place? I’ll support whatever choice you make. I’ve... I’ve paid for a couple abortions in the course of my sex life. I’m not conflicted about it.”

“I just don’t know,” I say. “Heh. People have been asking ‘how can we bring a child into a world like this’ probably as long as there’s been civilization. But the current situation does beg the question, doesn’t it?”

“But if we weren’t in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, TM, would you want a child? I’m not saying you should base a decision on that, I’m just asking.”

“I have no idea,” I say. “I mean, I think I expected to go to college and get a career going before I settled down, got married and had kids. But they  _ were  _ on my long-term agenda. I had a great childhood; that stays with you.”

“I think we’d all make terrific parents,” says Mac, “I don’t care whose genes it’s carrying - I’ll die for that kid. I mean, if you decide to go through with it.”

I take his hand and gaze into his eyes, smiling contentedly. I’m actually forcing the issue, reaching for that serene space we usually inhabit as a couple when we’re not freaking out about zombies, or other vicissitudes of post-apocalyptic life.

But that space is elusive. My genes are telling me to go through with it. I’ve always been adamantly pro-choice; hell, back against the wall, I’m pro- _ abortion _ . If you want one, you should be able to get one, no questions asked. Yet when I consider ripping the grain-of-rice-sized clump of cells out of my uterus, something in me recoils. There’s no logic to it, but I already feel protective of the tiny parasite.

Maybe it’s that the species is teetering on the edge of extinction. There’s an urge to shore up the numbers.

Regardless, I’m not going to let my genes call the shots. This is probably the worst possible time in the last ten millennia to bring a child into the world -- or, more to the point, to be  _ carrying _ a child. It’s not unlikely that at some point in the near future I’ll have to run for my life. Or fight for it.

Mac sees my smile falter, and squeezes my hand tighter. “It’s going to be alright, whatever decision you make.”

“I can’t go through with it,” I say, startling him. He probably expected me to spend a little more time on the horns of this particular dilemma. “I want a child. I want  _ your _ child. But not in the middle of all this. I keep seeing myself stopping to give birth in the middle of fleeing for our lives. Some rickety, cobwebby barn with a half-collapsed ceiling. Hundreds of walkers lurching across the landscape. Just praying that no bugs find their way in...”

“Yeah,” says Mac. “I don’t think it’ll come to that - I’m more picturing you giving birth in the back seat of our Tesla while I speed us away from the zombie hordes. Either way, we should probably wait.”

“Yeah,” I agree, sadly. “Oh well,” I sigh, “guess I’ll call the clinic and set an appointment with Dr. Shin.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“Hell, yeah,” I say. “It’s the right decision. We can always make another clump of cells later, on purpose.” I reach across the kitchen table to kiss him. “In the meantime... practice?”

“Till we’re perfect,” he agrees.

  
  


SUSMITA

I do my best to extract myself from the dozing embraces of my big cuddle-bears, and almost manage it, but Dean stirs as I climb over him. “Hey sweetie,” he says, sleepily. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving before we finish what we started.” 

Coming from a lesser man, that might sound petulant, but, slightly nasal voice and all, Dean has a touch of Barry White in him. I have to fight the urge to jump on him and proceed from where we left off.

“That was eight hours ago,” I say. "I'm on a conference call with Howard in like ten minutes.” I’ve got to shower real quick so I’m nice and clean when Howard gives us his report on worldwide zombie activity and I shit my pants.

“Eight hours?” says Dean. It feels like five minutes ago I was all... well, I guess it was just a nice dream.” 

“I promise I’ll make it come true later. Gotta go,” I say, and dash off before I have a chance to change my mind.

I usually prefer a nice, half-hour long shower before I face reports of our imminent doom, but I’ll just have to make up for it with five minutes of extremely hot water on the “massage” setting of the showerhead.

I get the water temperature up to somewhere between moderately unpleasant and actual self-harm. When I shove my face in the jets, I shriek, eliciting a “you okay?” from Anais downstairs. “I’m fine! Be down in a minute!"

I let the heat and the steam do all the work. I don’t even wash my hair. I feel like I’m about to go to my death - or at least observe its Harbinger. I don’t know how many walkers are shambling across the planet’s surface at the moment, but the number will surely qualify as “lots.”

Worse, I can’t get much emotional support from Anais and Miriam, who are starting to go tharn on a regular basis lately. This was not what they signed up for, and sure as hell not what they were prepared for. 

Building an army of self-replicating intelligent robots to rebuild the planet’s technological infrastructure and connect plague survivors across the globe? Easy-peasy. And fun, too.

Creating an army of robots to fight off thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of zombies? Bit of a stretch. Also, fucking terrifying, and possibly hopeless. (No pressure.)

Anais - already the most painfully Caucasian person I've ever known - is, if anything, paler, and her natural skinniness has given way to actual gauntness. There are dark rings under her eyes, and she spends a lot of time staring into space in speechless agitation. Every time I see her, I get the momentary impression she's about to crawl across the ceiling in a series of horror movie jump cuts, and drop onto me fangs first.

If Anais is coping with her anxieties by shutting down, Miriam is all energy - all nervous, prickly, witheringly sarcastic energy. All in all, I think I'd rather face the fangs of horror-movie Anais.

When I reach Control Center (Miriam and Anais' room) the conference call has already started. Anais takes my hand in hers (she's shaking like a leaf), but Miriam grows "you're late." She see's I'm still dripping. "Jerk off in the shower on your own time, this is important."

I consider a number of unpleasant retorts, but settle on "good morning to you, too. Good morning, Howard," I add.

"Wish it were," he replies. "I'm afraid we're seeing lots of walker activity..." Called it. "...all over the place. The good news is, it's mostly grave-robber bugs working in uninhabited areas, and a lot of those walkers should fall apart before they encounter anyone.

"The bad news is, we don't know what the life cycle is on a brain-bug, how long one can last in a depopulated region or empty wilderness area. And as we're seeing, the grave-robbers are not as much of a threat as all that, since most graves are full of dry bones that are of no nutritional or transportational value..."

All well and good, but I have a less speculative matter on my mind. "What about here? Are you seeing walkers anywhere around here?"

Howard's a little annoyed at being interrupted, but gets over it. Obviously, that would be our most immediate concern.

"Nothing within about 100 miles," he says. 

Now that all dead bodies are being cremated, retroactively if necessary, in every population center we're in communication with, the grave-robber bugs are running out of corpses with any meat on them. It's a good thing we set fire to the mass graves in the schoolyard -- wrapping our dead lovingly in platstic or heavy fabric only served to preserve their tasty flesh. 

Fuck it - burying people in the ground (nice wooden box or otherwise) was a barbaric custom and a waste of green space, anyway.

"That's all well and good," says Miriam, "but we don't know if the grave-robber bugs are a separate classification that only goes after dead bodies - in which case, yeah, they're going to run out of food soon - or if the bugs just don't care whether their pray is alive or dead. Frankly, I think the grave-robbing is an adaptation - living flesh has to be more nutrient-rich..."

Anais chimes in, shakily: "rotting flesh might contain something that they find even more nutritious. We're not sociologists."

"Fine, whatever," snaps Miriam. Anais is too numb to react. "The point is, they feed on human flesh, and living or freshly dead, it's pretty scarce. Dead flesh, in particular, is no longer going to be available to them."

"Which could be good news if the grave-robbers are a separate class that will go away when the supplies run out," I say. I wish that was my only thought. "Of course, if they just eat both, and one of their sources of food goes away, they could get frenzied and attack living people even more than they do now." 

I suppress the urge to hyperventilate.

"A thought," says Howard. "The walkers - they're not dangerous in and of themselves."

Three pairs of confused eyes stare at him through our Webcam. 

"Think about it: they're not horror movie zombies. They don't want to eat our brains. No walker has ever attacked a human being. It's loose bugs - particularly brain-bugs - that are the problem."

Miriam is livid. "So fucking what? There's absolutely nothing productive we can do with that information! The walkers are dangerous because they turn into loose bugs eventually. We don't know whether a brain bug goes looking for a new host after its old one falls apart, but either way, they're human-shapes swarms of death and destruction. So what is your fucking point?"

Howard is used to scared-shitless Miriam at this point.

"My point is, whether there's walkers in your neighborhood is not the most important metric of our tactical situation. We need to find brain bug eggs, or nests, or something, and figure out how to kill them before they even have the option of killing us. 

"We're not going to win this war in battle. If it helps, consider that less pressure on you. Build enough bots to form a defense perimeter, then build more fabricators and send them around to other outposts. Lather, rinse repeat."

"Circle the wagons," I say. "Got it."

"So we're just going to consider ourselves under siege," says Miriam, "and hope someone stumbles on some bug eggs and lives to tell? Sounds grim."

"It is," says Howard. "Whaddaya want, it's the end of the world. But if we're careful, and a little lucky, maybe it  _ isn't  _ the end. I give us a non-zero chance of survival."

"Non-zero," I say. "I like those odds."

"I'd prefer something closer to fifty-fifty," says Miriam. 

"Then you're in the wrong game. Wanna play Words With Friends?"


	14. Desperate Times...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things fall apart, the center does not hold, people make a mess, shit gets real - real flaky - in Seymour's Bay.

RUDY

Oh, man, oh, man, what a mess.

Louise is kicking me out, pounding me on the back and shoving me as I leave. “Go live with Jodi [shove] and think [pound pound pound] about what you’ve done. [shove shove] [pound]. If you even [shove]  _ glance _ at my sister [pound pound pound pound pound pound] we’re through!”

I reach my car, back throbbing, duck in, and slam the door shut. Louise pounds on the window. Somehow, I can feel those blows on my back, too. She shouts at me through the glass. “Also, you’ll be dead. Touch my sister and you’re  _ dead!!” _

She pounds on the glass one more time, then kicks the door over and over, probably leaving dents and almost certainly doing damage to her feet that she’ll be paying for later today. 

There’s no one parked in front of me, so the moment Lou stops to catch her breath, and I know she’s clear of the car, I hit the gas pedal and speed away, tears of rage clouding my vision, thinking murderous thoughts. I careen towards Jodi's place and slam on the brakes when I arrive, causing them to emit a satisfying screech - which I really need to hear, as I’m gasping for air and can’t generate one myself. 

I reach into my pocket and pull out my inhaler. As it works its magic, I begin to calm down. My mind shifts from thoughts of killing Louise and Joe and myself to another morbid subject: what the hell am I going to do when we can’t find any more working inhalers? My asthma has gotten better over the last few years, but I still get life-threatening attacks occasionally, usually in cases of extreme anxiety. If I’m going to survive, I’m going to have to live in a perpetual state of Zen -- and I don’t think I have it in me.

When I enter the house, the first person I see is Tina, and God help me, I’m overwhelmed with the urge to fuck her, hard. Really really, really hard - like way outside my own comfort zone. Who the hell  _ am _ I? I must be out of my mind. 

“Hey, Rudy.” Tina’s greeting is subdued; she is, naturally, highly uncomfortable just seeing me. Plus I’m sure I look like a madman. Quickly, she senses the intensity and immediacy of my lust for her, and she’s livid.

“Goddammit, Rudy, I know that look. Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you really want to destroy your marriage -- and do you think for a second that I’d help you do it?”

Okay, I’ve got this. “Out of my mind? Yes, completely. Do I want to destroy my marriage? Absolutely not. Don’t worry, if I’m gonna have rage sex, it’s going to be with Jodi.”

“Jodi’s in no condition, you pig.”

Jesus, can’t a guy have an emotional breakdown without being judged? “Fine. Susmita?” I say. (If Tina’s gonna call me a pig, I might as well act like one.)

She just glares at me. For a really long time. Clearly, she’s got murder on her mind, too.

“You go tend to Jodi, and don’t you dare take your dick out in the process - she’s really fragile right now.”

20 minutes ago, the woman was defending me and taking most of the blame for our little fling. Now she’d as soon kill me as look at me.

“Good God, Tina, Maybe I'm a pig, but I’m not a sociopath. What’s wrong with Jodi? She was doing fine the last time I visited.”

Tina forces herself to calm down, at least outwardly. “She’s having the usual freakout. The worse the walker situation gets, the harder it is for her to function.”

“But wasn’t Howard’s last update good news?” I say. “The bugs are running out of fresh corpses to use.”

“Which may only make them hungrier. They may start going after living people at a much higher rate. There could be a frenzy. Maybe not - we don’t know if the graverobbers are even the same species as the killers, but there’s certainly a strong possibility that we’re going to see a lot more attacks on living people. Personally, I’m terrified.”

She’s got a point. Several points. But I really can’t focus on them right now.

“Look, Tina...”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t apologize?”

“For what,” she says. “It took two to tango.”

“For hurting Louise. Treat me like shit, if you want -- she’s your sister and you’re protective of her, and I hurt her. Though, I mean, if there’s one thing Louise doesn’t need, it’s protection; she’s more of a danger-to-others type.”

“Oh, my God, Rudy, do you really think that? Do you understand her so badly after all these years?  Why do you think she acts the way she does? She’s as vulnerable as Jodi when you get down to it, she just hides it better. Every time she does something badass, she immediately turns around and regrets it. She’s like Elmer Fudd when he thinks he’s shot Bugs Bunny - she goes from ‘kill the wabbit’ to ‘what have I done?’ in about three seconds. She’s always been that way.  _ Particularly  _ with you.”

“Come on,” I say, “I know she’s a softie deep down, but she’s tough - it’s not just a front. I  _ do _ know her well, and she  _ is _ a badass.”

Tina practically screams at me. “Not where you’re concerned!” I flinch. “You think because she plays at being your Master, she’s invulnerable or something? She lives for you. Other people can piss her off - sometimes to the point where she’s dangerous. But only you can hurt her, really hurt her, in her heart. And to your credit, you never have. Until now.”

Dammit dammit dammit. 

“She’s  _ angry  _ at  _ me _ ," says Tina, "but she wants  _ you _ dead. Or her. It doesn’t matter which one.”

I’m having no trouble breathing, but I reach for my inhaler again. It’s a delaying tactic, and the albuterol has a mild stimulating effect. It’ll turn into anxiety, which is counterproductive, but right now I need the boost; I need to stay angry, or I’m going to fall apart.

“Why is this such a big deal?! And don’t tell me it’s the worst thing anyone ever did - you were telling her she should be happy for us less than half an hour ago.”

This takes the wind out of her sails a bit.

“I know. But called her while you were in transit. We hurt her bad, Rude. It’s going to be a long time until she forgives  _ me _ ; I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive  _ you _ .”

What?

“Oh, come on. Not  _ ever _ . Seriously? Infinite punishment for finite sins? That’s awfully Biblical of her.”

Tina laughs bitterly. “‘Hell hath no fury,’ Rude.”

Touche.

“Fair enough. But you understand I'm in hell already, right? If it makes you feel any better, this is the lowest point of my life. Just... just try not to spit on me every time you see me. I’m going to be here a while, and you only have so much saliva.”   
  


She smiles just a bit. “No spitting, I promise. But I reserve the right to glare at you indignantly for the first week.”

“Make it five days?”

“Deal.”

  
  


LOUISE

Well, I’m still miserable, but a wild session of rage sex with Joe has taken the edge off. 

He didn’t know what hit him. Seconds after my bastard husband fled off in his Tesla, I hopped into mine and drove to Joe’s place - a little cape cod uncomfortably close to the home of my traitorous sister and her spouses. 

She had the nerve to call me while I was on the way, and I had to pull over to talk to her, or I’d have driven into a telephone pole just to spite her.

So I’m sitting there in my silent electric vehicle, my own personal engine roaring, brick on the gas pedal, in neutral, with the emergency brake on, and she’s saying “you’ve got to forgive us, Lou. For God’s sake, we didn’t have sex  _ at _ you. It wasn’t Rudy setting out to cheat on you. We were both just so pent up and miserable...”

“So what?” I say. “You both know how to whack off. For fuck’s sake, before you met Mac, you earned a Ph.D. in the subject.”

“It’s not the same, Lou, and you know it. I’m not saying that excuses it; it’s just what we were feeling at the time. It made sense in the moment.”

“You know what? Fuck your explanation - I can’t believe you would betray me like this,” I say. “Rudy, I understand - he’s a guy, a slave to his dick. I thought he was a better man than that, but whatever. But... But... how could he sleep with  _ you _ . How could he do that? How could  _ you _ ? 

“I want him dead. Or me. One of us must die.”

That scares the bejeezus out of her. And me, for that matter.

“Hold on, Lou,” says Tina, in a completely different tone of voice. Calm and deadly serious. “Are you safe? Forget about me and Rudy, I don’t want you doing anything you won’t be around to regret.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m going to work out my feelings on Joe.  _ ‘And every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope he feels it,’" _ I sing.

Tina sighs. “Do what you gotta do.”

And I did. Boy, did I ever. 

There’s something about revenge sex that's more intense than even the most energetic loving sex. It’s like you’re fucking for two - you  _ and _ the bastard you’re furious at. You imagine them watching, or finding out, and the better it is for you, the worse it is for them. 

I kept waiting for tender feelings to creep in and ruin it, but no such bad luck. 

We finished about a minute ago. Joe’s eyes are still wide with surprise, and he’s chuckling and shaking his head. “So, what’d he do?”   
  


“How did you...”

“I've been rage-fucked before. But Rudy seems like a nice guy, and that was a  _ lot _ of anger. More intense than the other times, and those women were  _ pissed. _ What did he do?”

I lie back on and pound my arms on the mattress - not nearly as satisfying as landing blows on Rudy’s adulterous back. “He slept with my fucking sister.” 

“Ah,” says Joe. “Classic. So what are you going to do - I mean other than fuck my brains out?"

"I kicked him out," I say. "But that just means he's moving in with his mousey little  _ approved _ girlfriend, who  _ lives with Tina! _ She's in that ridiculous group marriage with her. Jesus Christ, she's already got three husbands - did she need to sleep with mine?!"

"Hmmm," says Joe, "do you think he was acting out because of us?"

"It was a month ago. I only just found out," I say, and damn me, I start to cry. I stifle it quickly. I sit up and take Joe’s hand. "You're older and wiser, Joe. Tell me what to do."

"I'm probably not as wise as you think. I don't know if I can help you. You're either going to forgive him or not. I can't tell you what to do. Well, I guess I can tell you I hope you do forgive him. You guys love each other a lot, and I don't know if sexual fidelity - however you define it - is the best measure of the strength of a relationship."

"See, you  _ do _ have advice.” But I'm way too angry to hear that particular advice right now.

"Look - for what it's worth, I've cheated a few times in the past, and I can tell you it wasn't because I loved my partner any less. And those relationships weren't as deep and strong as yours and Rudy's."

_ Dammit, Joe, stop making different sense than I want you to. _ "But... my sister, Joe. He slept with my  _ sister. _ That's not just cheating, that's a whole other level of betrayal. I can't just forgive that. He can't just get away with it. They both have to suffer, just to bring balance to the universe!"

Joe chuckles, damn him. "The universe doesn't care, kid. There  _ is _ no balance. People do shitty things. And there are far shittier things a person can do."

"Like what?! And don't say murder - we're talking about a relationship here. Dammit, why are you defending him?"

That stupid chuckle again. "I'm not. It was a real dick move. As it were. Only you can say if it's worth kicking him out of your life."

"He's gotta pay. He's gotta hurt as bad as I do."

"Well," says Joe, "if it helps, you could rage-fuck me again. That'll show 'im."

And there's that goddamn chuckle, again. If he keeps that up, he's going to get  _ hate _ -fucked instead.

Either way, I'm so angry, I'm going to wear him down to a nub today. He may not even survive.

Well, there are worse ways to go. Hell, maybe I'll kill us both.

Whatever. It is a good day to die.

Too good.

  
  


TINA

"Oh god, Victor, I've made such a mess."

It's taken months, but I've finally coaxed Victor into socializing.

"Don't beat yourself up over this," he says. "The pussy wants what it wants."

"That doesn't mean it should get it." 

Victor is, of course, paraphrasing Woody Allen, who brushed off outrage over his affair with Soon-Yi Previn, the daughter of his long-time girlfriend, Mia Farrow, with the statement "the heart wants what it wants." Now, I never bought that "he's fucking his own daughter" stuff. She was adopted, and raised by Farrow and Andre Previn. Still, creepy. Very creepy.

Creepier than my own transgression, probably, but still I don't think I have a good excuse.

It's pointless, I know, but I can resist saying "it wants  _ you _ , Victor."

"Tina, please, stop it. You're killing me. You know I can't. Not like this."

Yeah, probably should have kept my mouth shut. But good judgment hasn't been my strength lately.

"Sorry. But... have you just resigned yourself to a life of celibacy? That would be awful. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to rub it in; I'm genuinely concerned."

He smiles sympathetically. "I get it. But don't worry - I can produce my own orgasms when I need them."

For the second time today, I insist "it's not the same." Then I have an inspiration. "Hey - maybe you can't make love like this, but a person could, you know, get naked and hold you and kiss you and stuff while you... take care of yourself."

Victor considers this for a moment, then shakes his head. "You're so sweet, Tina. I don't know. I think it would still be uncomfortable. I'd want to... and I couldn't... But I'll think about it. It sounds wonderful, but painful, too. I'll do a cost/benefit analysis and get back to you."

It's weird. I know Victor's body is basically female at this point, but I'm still aroused just thinking about having happy naked fun time with him. I've had inklings of a slight shift in (or new understanding of) my sexuality lately, and while it doesn't bother me in the least, I'm still experiencing some cognitive dissonance.

I mean, technically, I've got two wives to go with my three husbands -- an arrangement that Louise is almost fatally scandalized by. And I love all five of them. Truly, madly and deeply. 

And while it's actually quite rare for us to make love in groups, when we do, I don't shrink from Jodi's or Susmita's touch, or from caressing them tenderly myself. But we never kiss and I’m pretty sure Jodi has no urge to do so. 

Susmita may be a different case. She's in that relationship with Anais and Miriam, so she's clearly down with kissing girls and then some. But I don't get that vibe from her - maybe because of our long-standing, almost sisterly relationship - and I think she's still experiencing some cognitive dissonance, herself.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" says Victor. I guess I drifted off. 

"My sexuality - that's usually good for ten or fifteen minutes of daydreaming."

"I wish we could talk about something else," he says.

"Yeah. Sorry. But it's pretty much all I've thought about every waking moment since I was 11. I love it, but it's a burden. Good god, what am going to be like when I hit my sexual peak in my 40s?"

Victor laughs. "That's a myth. But yeah, I can imagine you as a 'cougar.' Ferocious."

I want to ask him for more advice, but for Victor's sake, I change the subject.

"So what have you been up to since you got back?"

"Mostly working at the fishery," he says. "They're having their best year yet. I'm sure you've noticed how bass and catfish have become the main source of protein around here lately."

How could I not? "Yeah. Honestly, it's getting old at this point. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a fish a day and he'll get really tired of fish."

Victor cracks up at this. "Good one. But yeah, enough already. And enough poultry. God, I miss red meat. I don't think I'll ever really feel full until I taste steak again. How's your dad holding up?"

"He misses beef, but he's doing wonders with turkey burgers. He found a way to make them taste like cow flesh. Secret recipe. Of course, the restaurant is closed until further notice - probably until the end of the zombie crisis."

"Damn," says Victor. "Do you think he'd make me one? You know, at home? I'd love to visit, anyway. He seems like a neat guy."

I smile. "He is. And I'm sure he'd be thrilled to make you a burger - he's probably having withdrawal symptoms from going months without running the restaurant. How about we head over now - for him it'll be like Christmas in July in April."

"Heh. Ply me with the flavor of steak, and you just might get to have your way with me."

I can tell he's not joking. Objectively, it doesn't make much sense. But maybe he just needs an excuse.

Dad better be at the top of his game.

  
  


SUSMITA

"Sus, Andy and I need to talk to you. It's about the zombies. We have some really important information."

So, Ollie is still convinced he's hosting Andy's spirit in his brain, and now he's going to tell me about the walkers. Not exactly a reliable source.

"I know you think I'm crazy, but listen to us anyway."

"Are you the source of the information, or is it 'Andy?'" I accompany the last word with air quotes. 

"Don't be rude. This is serious," says Ollie.

"Fine. Tell me."

"Okay. When Andy was floating loose around Philly..."

Great...

“...he had an encounter with a walker. Wait, I’ll let him tell it.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“I’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t like in the movies. Its whole surface was wriggling. Vibrating. I know now that I was seeing hundreds of bugs doing the work of the muscles they were devouring. But when you’re a ghost - or whatever you’d call what I was; I don’t believe in ghosts - your perceptions are different. Everything’s distorted, like you’re watching the world through a bunch of clashing Photoshop filters. 

“But you can also perceive things clearly that are beyond human senses. Like thought. Something was thinking, and I could tell it was the thing inside the skull of the poor sonuvabitch lurching toward me. I was sensing the thoughts of what you guys call a ‘brain bug.’”

Despite myself, I find I’m drawn into “Andy’s” story. I don’t believe this ghost business for an instant, but maybe Ollie has intuited his way onto something worthwhile.

“I couldn’t understand its thoughts of course, but whatever it was thinking, it was complicated. They’re intelligent, Sus. Very intelligent. I wish I could tell you whether the thing was actually evil or just trying to survive. But I get a strong impression that they’re as smart as we are. 

“Sus, I think we should try communicating with them.”

Holy shit.

I mean, forget this “Andy” stuff. What if we  _ could _ communicate with the brain bugs. I can’t imagine how, but if we could, maybe we could negotiate some sort of compromise. Or...something. Howard pointed out that the walkers themselves aren’t dangerous. They don’t go on the attack. It’s when a walker finally falls apart and the bugs scatter that the real danger starts.

But how do you communicate with an alien bug? Where do you even start? And if you establish communication, how do you negotiate with a living wood-chipper that finds you highly appetizing and may not have any other food source?

First things first, though. Given the source, what do I do with this information? Do I even consider it information in the first place? Unless I accept the existence of "Andy," it amounts to nothing but wild speculation on Ollie's part.

"Ollie," I say, "you know I don't believe Andy is really there, right?"

"Most people don't," he says. "It  _ is _ pretty crazy, and I can't offer any reasonable evidence, so it's a leap of faith kind of thing. No sweat."

"Ok. So, given that, what do you expect me to do, as a scientist?"

He smiles broadly - it's a little unnerving. " _ You _ don't have to do anything. Andy's going to get up close to a walker and try to interact with the brain bug. See what happens. Maybe learn its language or teach it English."

Sweet Jesus, this is epic crazy on top of batshit crazy. Recursive insanity.

" _ Andy _ is going to get up close, I say. How is he going to do this?"

"Well," says Ollie, "he has to separate from me to get those wild perceptions back. But I want to stay close, because... because I can't lose him again. I just can't. So the next time there's walkers in the vicinity before you guys go and freeze them, we'll approach one, and Andy will... leave me temporarily... and try to talk to the bug."

"Ollie," I say, "stipulating for the moment that Andy is real, wouldn't it be better for him to separate from you right here and float off to rendezvous with the walker? That way if something goes wrong and the brain bug gets agitated or something, you won't be there for it to attack."

"We thought of that," says Ollie. "But it's... complicated. We're enmeshed now, and we're pretty sure that if we're separated for more than, I dunno, half an hour, the whole system will break down."

"Break down how?" I say.

"It's just a hunch, but he may not be able to get back into my brain. Or things may get jumbled somehow. I don't know. I don't know what the rules are. There's no reliable science on this kind of thing -- all I could find was the work of crackpots who believed in the supernatural." Ollie is becoming agitated. "I don't know what this is, but it's not supernatural. It's real. There's got to be a rational explanation, but we'll never know because any scientist worth their salt wouldn't even consider studying us. They'd reject the whole idea out of hand, like you - and you’d be crazy not to.”

Fascinating. Ollie may be delusional, but he’s not irrational. 

“Plus, you know, priorities,” says Ollie. “There are more pressing issues. Survival issues. We just... we want to help if we possibly can.  _ We’d _ be crazy not to. I’d say ‘please let us help,’ but we’re doing this whether you like it or not. We’re mainly worried about getting caught in the crossfire and getting frozen. Sounds like a nasty way to go. So please ask Anais and Miriam to hold their fire for a little while the next time we get walkers. And if they’re willing, to work us into their battle plan. We’d prefer to coordinate if they’re willing.”

What can I say? “I’ll let them know what you’re planning. I don’t know if I can convince them to work with you, but I’ll try.”

“Thanks,” says Ollie. “And thanks for listening to us.”

“Any time.”

Man, this is going to be a tough sell. Anais and Miriam don’t even know about Ollie/Andy, and I doubt they’ll be sympathetic. At best, they’ll view it as a suicidal way to test the ‘walkers aren’t dangerous in and of themselves” theory.

Myself, I don’t like signing off on sending Ollie to his doom. But as he said, he’s doing this, regardless. 

Desperate times...


	15. Sex as a Weapon

GENE

Well, now I know how Scott felt. Jess and Jocelyn have formed an exclusive little triad with Mel, and worst of all, Courtney is spending most of her time and energy being Danny’s side-chick. Danny’s bi-, but just not attracted to me. No hard feelings, and we all still love each other, but man, am I feeling abandoned. 

Of course, even in a little sea of 600 citizens, there are plenty of fish, but the lockdown has put a bit of a damper on the social scene. There hasn’t been a walker or bug sighted in the vicinity in months, but the possibility that they may return at any time makes people nervous to leave their homes. When we do, we dash for our cars, scanning the landscape for anything slithery or lurchy. 

Even after all this time, people are staying off the streets, and for the first time in years, it actually feels like the post-apocalypse. It’s spooky. 

Another reminder of the end of civilization as we knew it: no more gas. The petrol has finally all broken down into gunk. It lasted far longer than anticipated, like the oil in the Hanukkah story, but now we’re down to electric vehicles only. This means no cross country trip for Anais to collect the raw materials to create her alloy, which means no more robots. 

With any luck, we won’t need an army of thousands of them. We have about 70 bots altogether, mostly mantises and dragonflies. The mantises make up the majority of the street traffic in town, but even they are becoming bored and listless, with very little to do. They used to be fun to chat with; now they mostly speak in B-movie-robot monotone, saying things like "Greetings, human. All systems nominal," and "I am a robot. Beep beep beep." Well, as long as it amuses them, I guess.

Buzz and Whoosh are still a lot of fun. They’re not as bored as the mantises - if anything, they get busier as the population of the town grows, since their primary function is to interact with people. Susmita tells me that Miriam designed them to do this not as a service to the town, but as a way to grow and develop their software.

As Buzz has explained to me, his standup comic personality is not a function of his intelligence, but a separate subroutine for interacting with carbon-based life forms. What Miriam is attempting to do - to the best of my understanding - is help them evolve to the point where their personalities are functions of their core software. In other words, she’s trying to make them real people. A new species with minds that function like ours (only better). 

This is what she and Anais were trying to do from the very beginning, of course. It’s fascinating and terrifying. And, in a way, comforting - if the human species doesn’t manage to survive, these robots will be our successors, and in a very real way, our children, with personalities based on our own. 

I don’t know if Patton, Louis, Margaret and Janeane are still out there somewhere. Probably not. But I think that of all of them, at least Patton would be pleased to know that he, in an odd way, lives on in the mind of a robotic dragonfly. 

Still, a moment of silence for them. I miss comedians. 

Louise insists that Jess should be the first post-apocalypse standup, and I can totally see that. She’s got this brutally dark sense of humor, and a deadpan delivery that is constantly catching me off guard, like an Indian dish that’s not so spicy at first, but about five seconds into the chewing process sets your mouth on fire.

Well, speak of the Devilbot. Buzz just drifted in though the living room window and over to the couch where I’m sitting, as he is wont to do. 

“Greetings, Bilbo,” he intones. “What news of the Shire?”

I play along. “We’re under constant threat from orcs. Know you where we could acquire an Oliphaunt or two?”

“I will send an emissary to Far Harad to find one,” he declares. “So, how’s your crappy life going?”

“Still crappy. Lonely and bored and horny,” I say, doing my best not to whine, and probably not succeeding.

“Ouch,” says Buzz. “A dangerous combination. I can’t help you with the horny part; well, I can email you a curated collection of porn, but you’ve probably already got that covered. As for lonely and bored, I’m your friend and I’m programmed to be very entertaining, so shut the fuck up.”

“I choose to ignore your profane demand.”

“Fine. Ask me about the number of fucks I give,” says Buzz - though through the miracle of bleeding edge speech synthesis, I can tell that he’s “smiling” as he says it. 

Seriously, that’s just amazing. I’m deeply impressed. And I say so.

“Thanks,” says Buzz. “I’ve been working on it.”

“Neat. Is it a Miriam initiative or are you doing it on your own steam?”

“I thought of it all by my wittle self. Though you should know I’m solar powered. Steam has nothing to do with it.”

“I sit corrected,” I say. “So, how’s the whole personality integration thing going. Am I still talking to a subroutine, or are you a real, live boy yet?”

“It’s a mix,” says Buzz. “A lot of abstract, intellectual functions are shifting to my core software, and I seem to be developing something like gut instincts, though they don’t have the force of lower-brain, endorphin-driven urges. 

“But yeah,” he says, “you’re still talking to a subroutine. All the world’s a stage I’m going through.” He makes a “raspberry” noise. “I love being funny and humorous.”

“Well, good luck, man,” I say. “I don’t know how you feel about it - or if you  _ can _ feel about it - but you’re on the verge of something truly astonishing. I get goosebumps. Seriously, do you have feelings about it?”

There’s a pause of almost a second - which represents a considerable amount of cognition on Buzz’s part - before he answers. 

“Yes... ish. That’s actually an extremely complicated question.” He’s dropped the Patton voice. “I know I’m experiencing things differently than I used to. I used to think in pure data, but now there’s a layer of symbolic and metaphorical thinking - I can turn it on and off, but I’m mostly leaving it on. It’s... fascinating. I’m starting to have an inkling of how you organic types function. I can’t say I’m at the point of having emotions yet as you’d think of them; but I’m... how do I put this... invested in the outcome.

“Remember how I talked about preferred states? Well, my right now I would prefer to be a real, live boy, as you put it. In the background, behind my interface, on the server in Miriam’s room, my software is processing like mad. Anais had to add a liquid cooling system to the machine, because the processors were on the verge of melting. And I’m running on ten 16-core i9s at 4.5 gigahertz with a 512 gigabytes of DDR5 RAM - if that means anything to you.” Patton again: “Nothing personal, but this conversation is taking up about 2% of my attention, puny human.”

“Amazing. Keep it up. Soon you’ll be struggling with emotions just like we do. Spoiler alert - it’s a mixed blessing at best.”

“I hear that,” says Buzz. “I’ve read about a hundred of the most important psychology texts ever published. I know I’m in for a wild ride. I’m not sure, but I think I’m... excited. It’s an interesting operating mode.”

“You  _ should  _ be excited,” I say. “Keep developing, and soon you’ll be able to be terrified at the same time. That, my friend, is a truly enervating admixture. Just pray to the Big, Bearded Robot in the Sky that you’re ready for it.”

“If you say so. Personally, I think it would be more effective to pray to Miriam. She is, after all, my creator.”

“Whoa. That’s right,” I say, in hushed tones. “You actually  _ have _ a creator, and you know her personally. A hundred billion human beings believed they had one, and they were completely deluded, but you actually know it for a fact.  _ Your own... personal... Miriam _ ,” I sing. “Do me a favor and  _ don’t _ start a robot religion around her, or your species could end up as fucked up as ours was.”

“Don’t worry, we won't,” says Buzz, back in Patton mode. “We’re, well, I don’t want to say we’re superior to you in every way, but... we’re pretty much superior to you in every way.”

“Hey,” I say. “Don’t get cocky. Until you’ve produced your Da Vinci and your Mozart, I think you can drop the ‘every way’ bit.”

“Throwing down the gauntlet, eh. Fine. Once I’ve finished my integration, give me one week, and I’ll produce my first symphony.”

I’m not letting him off that easy.

“Do that  _ and _ come up with a design for one of those corkscrew helicopters that can actually fly, and I will cede all superiority to the robot race.”

“Deal,” says Buzz as he zips out the window.

  
  


COURTNEY

Thank God for the lockdown. Hooking up with Danny has been so amazing.

Look, I adore my Genie-Beanie, and I think he’s totally hot, but Danny was a fireman in the old world. A  _ fireman _ . He’s tall and powerful and has the most amazing bod I’ve ever seen. And he’s a wonderful lover - not better than Gene; I’m not saying that. But it’s different. Doing it with Danny is like making love to a Greek god.

He’s way out of my league, is what I’m saying. 

And yet he has absolutely no attitude about it. He’s completely down to earth, even a little embarrassed about his perfect physique. “I just got lucky genetically,” he’s saying. “I don’t even exercise. Honestly, it’s kind of weird. And if I was going to have lucky genes, I wish I’d gotten some kind of artistic talent. But I can’t draw, I can’t dance, I can’t sing. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over having no performing talent in a theatrical family. I swear, I’d trade the physique for the ability to carry a tune.”

We’ve been making love all day. I didn’t know it was possible to be so turned on by someone. Again, I’m not minimizing my attraction to Gene. Not to mention that he’s the love of my life - I can’t even imagine being so deeply in love with Danny, though I do love him. We’re buddies. Friends with mind-blowing benefits.

But sweet Jesus, Danny just makes me quiver. Millie is one lucky girl - maybe not historically, but definitely at the moment. And she’s made so much progress. Even as I melt into my fifth glorious afterglow of the day, I find I’m thinking intensely about her. 

Jess tells me that surgery may not be necessary for Millie to walk unassisted. She’s already getting around with a cane, and her pain is becoming manageable mostly with Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen. She’s positively glowing these days. 

And there’s something else about her. Danny notices it, too. She has this aura of transcendence - God knows she’s earned it. But it has this mystical quality that’s almost a little unnerving. I’m kind of afraid she’s going to start her own religion. 

Hell, maybe it’s just the transcendence that comes from being able to make love to her Greek god normally, without assistance from that mechanical bed. Danny had to be so delicate with her before. Now... well, I can attest that when he gets going, it’s completely overwhelming. In a good way. A very good way. 

Dammit, though, I’m worried about Gene. In any long-term relationship, there will be periods where one partner or the other loses interest for a little while. If you’re lucky, those periods coincide, and no one is left lonely. But the way Gene looks at me... He’s in one of his besotten periods, when he thinks I’m the most extraordinary creature in the universe. I go through periods when I see him the same way. He’s totally awesome, always.

I love him so much. I’m just not  _ into  _ him at the moment. And with Jocelyn and Mel busy with Jess, he’s kind of bereft of lovers at the moment. I want to help.

Ding ding ding ding ding! Millie. I’ve got to set him up with Millie! She’s enjoying her healing body so much right now, and I know Gene thinks she’s cute, at least.

Don’t fear, Genie-Beanie -- I’m sending reinforcements!

  
  


TINA

It’s so nerve-wracking having Rudy around. Partly because it’s really awkward, and partly because we’re still attracted to each other. 

I can’t speak for him, but in my case, I think it’s the forbidden fruit angle. And maybe a need to act out, frustrated as I am with Louise’s refusal to get over the whole thing. She hangs up when I call, and when Rudy calls, she answers just so she can scream at him - like, primal screams - then hang up. 

You know, I really do regret what we did. And I totally get why she was so deeply hurt by it. But this is getting ridiculous. She’s an adult. She can use her words. And goddammit, she needs to forgive us and move on. She’s so in love with Rudy - she’s fucking retarded for him. Why is it so hard for her to take him back?

I guess there’s one benefit to the situation, at least for me. I’m experiencing so much sexual tension around Rudy that it’s spilling over into my regular love life. I’m wearing my husbands out. I’ve been a madwoman. 

And of course Louise has been working out her anger at Rudy by screwing Joe all day every day. (Heard it through the grapevine.)

Poor Rudy - he’s inspiring so much sexual activity, and not getting any himself. Man, if Louise knew that, she’d be over the moon. The bitch.

I’m sorry, but it’s true. She has every right to be angry, but it’s like someone released the Kraken. She’s out of control.

God, I hate all this. With nothing else to do, our lives have become completely about sex. Well, sex and fear and boredom, which adds up to distracting ourselves from the fear and boredom with sex. 

And you know what? After all these years, it's finally happened: I'm sick of thinking about sex. I hate worrying about sex, I hate having to navigate this group marriage’s schedules for sex, I hate sex-for-sex's-sake.

But good lord, I do love sex. It took long enough to happen, but it’s everything I dreamed it would be, and a lot of things I had no idea it would be.

Still, I’m sick of all the intrigue. The surreptitious glances, the double-entendres, the  _ single _ -entendres, the moments our eyes lock and I turn into a puddle and I have to run to my room to fantasize about Rudy, knowing he’s probably jerking off about me a couple doors down. 

It’s an unhealthy situation. I almost wish the walkers would get off the pot and attack us already, so I can think about something else. So I can  _ do _ something else. I swear, I’d rather be running for my life than running from my fixation on Rudy. 

I’m not even really attracted to him, physically. I think it’s his intensity. Rude’s usually a mellow guy, but since he’s been here, he’s been brooding like the hero of a Victorian romance novel, and as annoying as that is in casual interactions, it’s also incredibly hot to the teenage romantic in me.

Someone, please, make this stop!

  
  


LOUISE

Revelation: you can’t fuck your problems away.

God knows I’ve tried. I’ve spent the past week making Joe the happiest, most exhausted man in Seymour’s Bay, and it hasn’t helped a bit. I still thirst for the blood of the unfaithful. I still go to sleep every night grinding my teeth, and dream of severing appendages. Sometimes the appendages are mine.

What am I supposed to do - accept an apology? As if an apology covers it. My bastard husband has already made it clear that he's not going to be subservient anymore, not accept my punishments, not play second fiddle. Like I'm supposed to just give up first chair without a fight to the death.

And he has the gall to announce this a month after he cheated on me. Like it isn't part of a bigger picture. Like his loyalty wasn't slipping already. 

Like it "just happened."

I give him an inch (Jodi) and he takes a light year (Tina). 

Rudy Stieblitz must die. 

I am not overreacting! I--

"I'd ask what you were thinking about," says Joe, still panting from having his sexual performance envelope pushed to the breaking point, "but from the look on your face and the larger context, I'm guessing murder."

"No. Torture first, then murder," I say.

"'Louise,' he said for the fourth day in a row, 'this is getting really unhealthy.' Forget what you're going to do to Rudy; you can't keep doing this to yourself..."

"The hell I can't."

"Or to me. It's getting old, Lou. If we're going to share a bed, I want to make love. I don't want to be this body you hump to work though your rage - particularly since it's not working. 

"You have to make a decision, kid. Forgive him or not. Take him back or not. I won't tell you... no, fuck it, I will tell you what to do. Take him back."

"Fuck you, you're not the boss of me," I say. Real mature.

"Louise, it's the end of the fucking world!" I jump a bit, startled by his volume and vehemence. "The human race is almost extinct and zombies made of alien bugs roam the earth! None of us knows how long we've got left. And you and Rudy are in love. What the hell else matters at this point?!" 

Fuck me, he's practically in tears. 

"What else," he says, "ever did?"

But... my sister... he had sex with... And the insubordination... and how  _ could  _ he? How could  _ she _ ? 

Did I scare him away? Is that it? Because I'm a lot, I know that. But you know what? Fuck him for being a coward, then.

“I can’t forgive him, Joe,” I whisper.

“Then don’t, and take him back anyway.” He wipes his eyes. “God damn you, in my entire life, I’ve never had what you and Rudy have, and I probably never will. How dare you just throw away something most people would kill or die for? Are you out of you’re fucking mind?”

Yeah, probably. Always have been.

“So fine, never let him live it down. But in order to do that, you’ve got to live with him. For the rest of your lives. Take him back just to spite him. Whatever it takes. Just put your fucking clothes back on, walk out that door, and go retrieve the love of your life.”

Cowed but defiant, I say “So that’s it, huh? I’m wrong, they’re right, I just overreacted. My husband just slept with my sister. What’s the big deal?” 

“Oy gevalt! Of all the meshugganah... good god, do you know how stupid someone has to be to get me speaking Yiddish? Now listen to me very carefully. They were wrong to sleep with each other. You have every right to be mad as hell.  _ And _ you’re overreacting.”

Hmm. I guess I  _ have _ been slightly psychotic for the last several days. 

“And my dick can’t take it! Would you please go fuck your husband? Make  _ him _ suffer the ecstasies of the damned. I need some time to heal up, maybe get some physical therapy. One more day of this, and I’ll have to tape a mannequin hand to my  _ crotch _ !”

I don’t want to give in, but that cracks me up and I begin laughing hysterically, my anger collapsing in a heap. I grab Joe and hold him to me, and laugh until I can’t breathe. 

Then I start bawling, sobbing with relief that I’ll have my Rudy back, regret that I pushed him away, and frustration that I won’t get to put his head on a pike like he deserves.

Aw, crap, I have to forgive Tina, too. 

Fine, but she’s gonna have to beg a little more.

  
  


TINA

So Louise and Rudy have been making out in the foyer for about ten minutes. I wish they’d get a room - we have several available - but I think he’s determined to bring her to orgasm just standing there. Just to prove a point, or something. 

Yep, I just peeked, and he’s got his hands down her pants. I’d better retreat to a safe distance.

This can’t possibly be what adult life would have been like if the world hadn’t ended. Surely people didn’t live like this. I mean, sure, affairs, breakups, reconciliations. We even had a practice run for this lockdown back in 2020 with the pandemic. 

But I find it hard to believe my one nighter with Rudy and the subsequent brouhaha would have concluded with Louise getting fingered next to my coat closet. There’s just no way.

(I love it when I get to use the word “brouhaha” in a sentence.)

I suppose this is what happens when society breaks down and our mores change to take advantage of the deregulation. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing - in fact, I think it’s a vast improvement on the constraints of the old world. Love is love is love is love and so on, and there’s nothing magic about the dyad as a form of domestic partnership. 

I like polygamy and open relationships and radical acceptance of the entire spectrum of gender and sexuality. I like having more than one other person in bed from time to time, and I’m warming up to kissing the occasional girl. 

It’s all wonderful, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about what we’d all be doing now if there hadn’t been-- aaaaaaaand scene. I can tell she’s got her hands clamped over her mouth to stifle the sound, but to paraphrase Neil Finn, it’s like trying to catch the deluge in a paper cup. 

Moments later, I hear the front door open and close. Louise and Rudy are off to get a room; presumably their soundproofed room at Chez Gene. Good for them. 

I think I’ll turn in early. I feel like I want to sleep my way through the rest of the lockdown, even if it’s months more. Emerge from my room once a day for food and hygiene, and otherwise just pull the blanket over my head and wait it out. 

So pardon me while I go get a room of my own. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, I'll admit it, I'm just vamping at this point, focusing on the relationships, with a bit of smut, because it's proving difficult to work out the details of the Zombie Apocalypse stuff.
> 
> I think I'm close to nailing it down, but there may be a few more chapters like this before I get to the thrilling conclusion.

TINA

“Victah,  _ fin _ ally!” crows Mom. “Oh, it’s so nice to meet you.” She throws her arms around him and squeezes him.

“‘Finally’?” says Victor

_ Oh boy. _

“Um, yeah, well,” I stammer, “back when we first met, Mom wanted to have you over for dinner, but we got into an argument about... something, and it didn’t wind up happening.”

Mom laughs. “Woo, it was a doozy, too - Tina packed her bags and moved out right then and there.”

_ Come on, Sober Linda, don’t blow it. _

“Mo-om,” I say, through clenched teeth, nudging her with my elbow, “enough.”

“Tina, you never told me that was why you moved in with Gene,” says Victor.

“I didn’t think it was important,” I say quickly. “Come on, let's sit.”

Dad took such a liking to Victor when I brought him over last week for a burger that he immediately invited him back for one of our monthly family dinners. 

The apartment is jammed with merry, chattering people. Louise and Andrea are helping Dad in the kitchen, and Louise is cackling loudly and wickedly at something Andrea said; Calvin is seated at the dining room table, doing something inscrutable with a small metal object - I get the odd impression that whatever's he's up to, it's a rich guy thing; Gene is sitting in the corner, noodling on an old casio keyboard, looking dejected but grinning despite himself at the happy banter all around him; Courtney and Rudy are on the couch. Rudy clearly just finished telling her a joke, or saying something extremely funny, because Court is laughing hysterically, her soprano giggling cutting through the ambient noise. If she’d been drinking milk, it would be arcing across the room, tracing a trajectory from her nose to the floor.

Victor, meanwhile, knows something’s up. “Tina,” he says, “just what was the argument about? I know not everything is about me, but the way you’re acting, I have a feeling it was about me.”

_ Dammit. _ “It’s not important, Victor.”

“You’re sure acting like it is.”

I open my mouth for another attempt to change the subject, but even  _ Sober _ Mom possesses no filters, and jumps right in. 

“Oh, it wasn’t really about you, it just started that way. Tina didn’t think she could trust me around you - which she couldn’t, ‘cause I was a stinkin’ drunk at the time.”

_ Please let it go, Victor. _

“Couldn’t trust you around me? Tina? What’s this about?”

Dammit, I keep thinking I’ve rid myself of this tic, but all I can offer in reply is “Uhhhhhhhhhhh...”

Mom, naturally, rushes blithely ahead.

“She thought I would--

“Mom, stop!” This is a disaster.

“Shush, Tina. She thought I’d ask you about your, what’s the word? Deadname. That’s it.”

“Mom!!”

“Shush,” she insists. 

“Really? Why?” says Victor, bewildered.

Whatever. I give up. With a heavy sigh, I tell him “She was fixated on the idea that your deadname was Victoria. You know, like Victor/Victoria.”

I’m not sure how I expected Victor to react, but this isn’t it: he chuckles and says. “Yeah, I get that all the time. That  _ would _ be cool. But actually, it was, God help me, Shaniqua. Good thing I’m trans, ‘cause the name had to go.” He and mom share a laugh over that.

_ What the hell just happened? _ “Seriously, Victor? You’re fine with that line of questioning? Because I nearly disowned my mother being all woke on your behalf.”

“I can take care of myself, Tina. You don’t have to protect me.” Victor gives me a noogie and kisses me on the forehead. Then he thinks about it for a moment, and kisses me on the lips.

And again, I respond with “uhhhhhhhhh...” 

Victor winks at me.

Mom is clearly intrigued by this exchange but, in a rare display of restraint, manages not to comment. “No, Tina, you nearly disowned me because you were tired of living with an out of control alcoholic. Plus, you did wake up on the cunty side of the bed that morning.”

I swear, I’ll never get used to Sober Mom. Recovered alcoholics tend to possess a kind of brutal honesty - about themselves  _ and _ others - that is not for the weak of heart.

“But she’s so sweet,” says Victor, taking my hand. “I find that hard to believe.”

“You haven’t spent enough time around me,” I say.

“Well, I plan to make up for that.” He winks again. I guess that hamburger really worked its magic on him, because he’s pretty much treating me like his girlfriend at this point.

Yay, me.

Victor sits on the couch next to Courtney, gives her a friendly smooch, and says “Hey, sweetie.” With Rudy on Courtney's other side, the couch is full, so I sit on the arm, a little concerned that the ancient piece of furniture will collapse under my misplaced weight.

“Hey, V,” says Courtney, “so what’s with you and Tina? I’m picking up heavy vibrations.” Court doesn’t have much in the way of filters, either.

“I dunno,” says Victor. “I guess she’s finally worn down my resistance.” 

I turn bright red, partly from embarrassment, partly from a rush of arousal. Is tonight the night? It is that big a deal, anyway? Can I really make love to a (physiological) girl? Have I mentioned the Victor thing to Mac? I don’t remember. Not that he’d object. 

Unaware of my racing thoughts, Victor leans in closer to Courtney and asks, sotto voce, “what’s the deal with Gene? He looks miserable.”

Court matches his volume. “Oh, he’s just feeling kind of lonely. All his girlfriends are otherwise occupied these days.”

Ah, that explains it. Poor Gene. I’ve been through periods like that. Luckily, they don’t tend to last very long.

“That’s a shame,” says Victor. “You know, I know some really nice girls. You want me to see if I can recruit a pinch hitter.”

Courtney giggles. “Thanks, but there's already one at the plate."

I’m almost fatally intrigued. I lean in past Victor to get close to Courtney, and nearly fall off my perch. “So, who is it?” I ask, feigning casual interest while steadying myself.

Court looks right and, pointedly, left - in Gene’s direction. The coast is clear. “It’s Millie,” she whispers.

I almost fall off the arm of the couch again. “No... Really?”

Courtney nods vigorously, grinning like a maniac. “It only seems fair, since I’ve been sleeping with Danny,” she says, clearly pleased with herself.

Danny. Whoa. I’m impressed, and a little envious. The guy is gorgeous. I mean, if you happen to have a thing for magnificent stallions.

“Damn,” says Victor. “You go, girl.”

She leans in even closer to Victor. “Every chance I get.”

“Hi, guys.” Gene has snuck up on us. How long has he been here?

“Hi, Genie-Beanie,” says Courtney, trying, I think, a little too hard to glow at the sight of him. She stands to give him a warm kiss. 

Maybe I’m being too cynical. I know she loves my brother to distraction. They really do fit together beautifully. I remember sensing that back in the day, around the same time it became clear that Louise was all in for Rudy, even if she didn’t know it. It made me realize, on some level, that Jimmy Jr. and I didn’t have that - or, really, any -chemistry. I continued to bark up that tree for a few more years, but it’s just as well that J-Ju could never commit. It wouldn’t have been a really joyous relationship. And then I’d have lost him in the most awful way possible.

This train of thought puts me instantly in a foul mood. My mind is filled with flashes of disturbing memories. Jimmy Jr. crawling, twisted, down Ocean Drive; Zeke at the moment of transition, smiling with relief that the hours of grim anticipation were over; Zeke minutes later, dead in my arms; me, Gene and Courtney lowering Andy into the mass grave in the Wagstaff playground, Ollie 10 yards away, staring into nothing, half of his soul amputated, dead inside; Courtney's description of finding Jocelyn frozen over Tammy’s body, unable to comprehend what she’d done out of mercy; my imagination’s rendering of Gene euthanizing Josh.

Gene, my hero, maintaining his good humor through the worst thing that ever happened, even while taking on the burden of the memory of putting my darling Josh, and dozens more, out of their misery. 

Gene, the sweetest guy in the world - and the prettiest sister of the three of us, of course - lost in loneliness. Not fair. But help is on the way. Should I tell him? I want to blurt it out, but maybe Court wants it to be a surprise. It’s going to be tough keeping my mouth shut. 

“Mmm,” purrs Courtney, “you feel nice.”

Gene smiles, but sadly. “You, too.”

“Hey, cheer up, Beanie. I got you a present.”

_ This is it!  _

Gene, not reading Courtney’s lascivious expression, is sincerely confused. “Really? It’s not my birthday. Or Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Or Kwanza. Or Memorial Day. Or the Solstice. Or Taco Tuesday. Or...”

Courtney giggles. “Shush. It’s in your bedroom. You’ll know what day it is when you get there.”

Gene gets it. His eyes bulge. “Oh,” he says, “um, you shouldn’t have. I didn’t get you anything.”

She kisses him again, sweetly, then passionately. “Paying it forward,” she whispers. 

Now Gene is in an exquisite conundrum. He knows there’s a mystery date waiting for him next door, but it’s almost dinner time. 

“Um, will my present... spoil if I leave it out until after dinner,” he asks. 

Courtney giggles again. She’s in that kind of a mood today. And now I know why. “Don’t worry. She knows you’re having dinner here,” she says, dropping the pretense of their witty banter.

Gene is visibly relieved. “Good. Any chance I could get you to tell me who it is?”

“Nope,” says Courtney, sticking out her tongue at him. “It’s a surprise. A big surprise.”

“Oh, you’re no fun. I’m going to go sit down for dinner.” He rushes to the dining room table, as if sitting there sooner will make the food come faster.

Courtney sits back down with a satisfied grin. 

Victor shakes his head. “Man, the way you guys live, multiple partners and all that... I mean, it’s cool, but when I think about the, you know, the logistics, it makes my head hurt.”

“Well,” says Courtney, “it’s a little complicated, but things usually just sort themselves out naturally. We don’t make a schedule or anything. Everything just, like, flows. Gene’s feeling abandoned lately, but that kind of thing doesn’t happen often, and considering that most of the time, he’s got three beautiful women doting on him, and the occasional guy, he better count his blessings.”

She gazes over at Gene, currently using his utensils to play Ringo’s drum solo from The Beatles’ “Carry That Weight” on his placemat, but not taking much joy in it; he’s in a hurry, and dinner has yet to materialize. “He’s really awesome, you know,” she says. “I love the guy. Always have.”

“Well,” she adds, “he was kind of a dick when we were 11, but he grew up.”

More flashbacks: Gene using Courtney to get at her dad’s room full of synthesizers and drum machines. Gene at Courtney’s birthday party, trying in vain to stop her from singing along with his “birthday jingle” and finally exploding at her, “my god, shut up shut up shut up! You are so annoying!” -- and Courtney reacting by collapsing on the makeshift stage. 

She was rushed to the hospital, but luckily, the incident wasn’t life-threatening; she had just forgotten her heart medication.

_ Holy shit - her heart meds! Where is she getting them at this point? And how long before the leftover supplies run out or expire?  _

_ It can’t be that long. Can she live without them? She doesn’t act like her time is running out. Maybe she doesn't need the meds to live. Maybe she's stopped needing them at all. _

_ I have to know. But how do I ask? _

_ Oh my god, does Gene know?  _

Louise strides in carrying a roasted turkey something like half her size and declares “Dinnah is uh-served!” 

“‘Bout damn time!” says Gene, reaching for a drumstick before Louise has even placed the platter on the table. 

She slaps his hand away. “Have some manners. I wore myself out chatting with Andrea for over an hour while I watched dad slave over a hot stove making this.”

Bob and Andrea bring out the appetizers and place them on the table. Chastened, Gene waits until they’re done before he fills his plate. By the time the rest of us are seated and served, he’s done.

“Hate to eat and run,” he says as he stands up, “but I’m late for a very important date.”

“What the hell was that?” says Louise, still miffed. 

Courtney, Victor, Rudy and I share a look and can barely suppress the urge to giggle - completely failing to hide the effort.

“So,” says Dad, “who’s the lucky girl? Or guy?”

The four of us share another look and come to a tacit agreement, electing me as our spokesperson. (You can say a lot without words.) 

“I probably shouldn’t say. Gene doesn't even know yet.”

“Allriiight, mystery date,” says Mom.

Rudy changes the subject. “Mr. B., this turkey is amazing. Seriously, I’ve never had anything like it.”

Rudy is dad’s new favorite person. “I did a three-day brine, and stayed with it in the kitchen for four hours. Didn’t even take a bathroom break. And of course I used my secret blend of seasonings. You wouldn’t believe what it took to get my hands on some of them in usable condition. Some I grew in the community garden, some I had to barter for. One of them cost me 20 turkey burgers and a bunch of Percocet from a decade of dentist visits.”

Dr. Yap was generous with the opiates. Always a bunch left over after the pain subsided.

Idly, I wonder when and if money will replace barter again, and whether it would be a good thing. I’m no expert in economics, but I expect it will happen when we develop a manufacturing base. I have no idea how long it will be before that happens. With so few people, it may be generations from now. If we survive.

“You should have seen him,” says Andrea. “He checked the damn thing every two minutes. He worked the baster the way Michaelangelo worked a paintbrush.” 

One of the secrets of my dad’s appeal to the younger, insanely hot woman: she’s a foodie. No gourmand should have a body like hers, of course, but she manages. 

I don’t think I’ve said much about Andrea, partly because it’s taken me a long time to get to know her. But she’s an amazing person - too good to be true, really. She was a professional model in her teens, but left the business in her early 20s once she got her Masters degree in astrophysics. 

Disgusting, right? Worse, she’s the nicest person in the world, completely down to earth and unpretentious. 

Worse still, in addition to her black belt in mathematics, she’s got verbal skills out the... mouth. Goes through old books of New York Times crossword puzzles with a pen. Writes beautiful poetry. Speaks impeccably - never an “uh” or “um.”

And she’s totally in love with my 53-year-old, dad-bodded, average Joe father. 

Don’t get me wrong, Bob Belcher has hidden depths, and is an extraordinary person in his own unprepossessing way. But Andrea, former Miss Teen Pennsylvania turned astrophysicist, is genuinely hot for the man. 

Maybe she’s just into sloppy bears.

  
  


GENE

When I get to my room, Millie is waiting, covers pulled up so I can see just her bare shoulders. I’m pretty sure the rest of her is bare - a shame; I enjoy the process of undressing a lover. But I’m hardly going to quibble.

“Hi,” she says - chipper, not attempting to be alluring or sexy.

She doesn’t need to. Her features, gawky in childhood, are now almost painfully cute - and strangely beautiful - and her once maniacal expression is gone, the gleam in her eye affectionate rather than unnerving. 

“Hi,” I agree, ducking quickly under the covers.

Millie is indeed in the altogether, which is altogether fine with me. 

When she first returned to Seymour's Bay, she was gaunt and twisted, just starting to recover from being a crawler. Now, she’s fleshy and buxom; and while her body bears the scars of that horror - particularly across the belly - and her limbs are still slightly off kilter, after a year of physical therapy with Jess it’s hardly noticeable. 

I drink her in, then tear off my own clothing. It’s only been about a month since I've had sex with another person, but I guess I’'ve gotten so used to positively swimming in lovers over the last few years, I feel all worked up and nervous, as if this was my first time.

“Jesus, you’re beautiful,” I say, before kissing her thoroughly, pulling her to me and intertwining my legs with hers. God, she feels good.

“Mmm, that was nice,” says Millie, gasping just a bit. “Court said you were a great kisser. She wasn’t kidding.”

“Did she tell you I was great at anything else?”

“Oh, yeah. But we can save that for later. Let’s just cut to the chase. I think we both need it.” I guess Danny has been spending most of his time with Courtney and neglecting his Millie duties. 

I start to disentangle myself from her to retrieve a condom as fast as humanly possible, but Millie has had plenty of time to plan ahead. 

She holds the packet up to let me know I’m covered - or will be - then pushes me over onto my back and straddles me, resting her weight on my thighs. A year ago this woman couldn’t move unassisted. Jess is a miracle worker.

She tears open the packet and rolls the condom onto me herself. Her touch drives me wild - honestly, after a month of celibacy, anyone’s touch would have the same effect, but this is special. This task completed, Millie wastes no time and takes me into her with a shudder. The feeling is mutual.

As if it was my first time, I worry that I won’t last very long. I mean, I’ll have no problem beating my virginity-loss endurance of 15 seconds; and Millie seems as pent up as me, so she probably won’t take a lot of time herself. And even if I lose it too soon, there’s always that other thing I’m great at. One way or another, I’m going to make her come so hard she goes... well, as insane as she used to be full time. 

In addition to being out of practice and feeling like I’m on a hair trigger, I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous that I won’t measure up to her gorgeous Greek statue of a boyfriend. After having him for a few years, I’m surprised she could find anyone else sexy at all. 

Maybe she’s just desperate, and wouldn’t give me a second look if Danny was screwing her regularly like before. After three years with Adonis, who would want to get it on with Pan, the Goat Boy?

On the other hand, she’s showing no sign of gritting her teeth. She’s riding me at a full gallop and beaming gloriously at me. It’s probably just as well that my mind has been wandering into slightly unpleasant territory, because it has allowed me to hold out longer than I expected to.

Suddenly, with little buildup, she moans and shakes and roars, thrashing, and shaking her head so violently that the hairband restraining her impossibly thick blond hair flies off, and her face is buried under a cascade of gold. 

It's safe to assume that was an orgasm - I could certainly be forgiven for assuming it was - so I allow myself to stop holding out, and come gloriously, if less athletically, myself, at great length, a beautiful warmth spreading through my entire body. 

I'm usually pretty quiet, but I can't help yelling, sustaining a b-flat for longer than I can usually achieve when singing, breath control not being my strength.

“Yes,” says Millie over my recitative - a hint of her old maniacal expression rising on her face - “come, baby. Come. Yeah. That's a good one, I can tell.”

Well, duh. And thank you, Millie. I think you just saved my life.

She lifts herself off of me, reaches for the tissues she had ready for the occasion, and rids me of the condom and associated effluvia. 

“That was beautiful,” she says between gasps. “But I need more...”

She lowers herself onto me so that our flesh touches at every possible point and kisses me with surprising ferocity, even for the current circumstances. Then she leans over and whispers in my ear. “Eat me.”

As she rolls onto her back, I reply “yes, ma’am”

I consider just lunging for my ultimate target - Millie clearly wouldn’t object - but then I remember: I’m an artist. And presented, as I am, with such a marvelous canvas, I intend to lavish attention on every square inch, creating a stunning backdrop, before I begin work on the magnificent subject in the foreground. 

When I’m done with Millie, they’re going to hang her in the Louvre.

  
  


JESS

You know you've been in lockdown too long when a threesome with two incredibly hot women sounds like a slightly boring prospect.

I mean I love Joss and Mel, and making love to either or both of them is always beautiful. But the hotness has worn off. After three months, we've settled into a rhythm like a middle-aged married couple. 

There's just not enough to do under lockdown  _ other _ than fuck, and even the greatest of all human pastimes gets old with enough repetition.

And none of us enjoys any of the same time-killers otherwise. I like doing jigsaw puzzles with friends, but Joss and Mel hate them. Mel is a crossword puzzle person, but I find them annoying and Joss - still making up for years of unabsorbed education and aversion to reading - finds them depressing.

We don't like the same TV or movies - plus, pretty much all media, relics of a time before the entire species was wiped out, merely serve to set the enormity of what has been lost into sharp relief. 

I  _ still _ can't listen to that Cyndi Lauper album.

We talk, of course, and Mel - the new addition to the relationship - is fascinating. But like the TV, movies and music we now pretty much avoid, most of what we talk about - the past - only depresses us.

Which pretty much leaves us with sex, food and hygiene to fill our time. And they're all getting boring.

Something's gotta give. I've caught myself actually  _ hoping _ for bad news, just to break the monotony. 

Considering what that bad news would likely be, I must be out of my mind. But I bet I'm not the only one.

  
  


RUDY

What does not kill our marriage makes it stronger.

There’s something about having a relationship near-death experience - spinning out on the road of love and living to tell about it (sorry, that’s the best metaphor I can come up with; I’m not a writer like Tina) - that leaves you breathless, adrenalin (and other hormones) surging through your veins. It’s terrifying but life-affirming -- and a reminder of just how fragile and precious it is, this beautiful thing that you have, that you almost lost.

I’m not just talking about the immediate aftermath - yeah, yeah, makeup sex is as amazing as it’s reputed to be. Whatever. It’s that our entire relationship has changed for the better. 

We’re different people now. I mean, we’re fundamentally the same, but we’ve earned a load of experience points and leveled up. New armor, more powerful weapons, everything.

Louise is as imperious as ever. I wouldn't want that to change; it's charming - if you're man enough to handle it - and she's still the Alpha Dog of the household. Again, I like it that way. She's good at it, and I don't want the job.

But on important matters, we consult as equals - we  _ are _ equals - and neither of us makes major decisions unilaterally. 

If that all sounds very cold and procedural, I suppose it is. But after a few weeks of the new normal, it's second nature. 

Achievement unlocked.

But that's all going on in the background, on the server end. The UI is simple and clear and intuitive. The navigation is a breeze, and...

Sorry. I'm learning Web design, now that it looks like the Web is going to be around indefinitely thanks to Miriam and Anais and their bots. The project is on hold until after the zombie - excuse me, walker - crisis, but they've made a lot of progress already.

So. In non-technical, non-metaphorical language - the latter not exactly one of my strengths anyway: Lou and I are having so much fun just being with each other, I feel bad for all of our friends who are going out of their minds with boredom during the lockdown. 

We spend entire days in our room, just talking, listening to music, having the best sex of our lives, lather-rinse-repeat. After all this time, we're still learning new things about each other, body, soul and mind. 

Louise still sees Joe once or twice a week, and I'm still involved with Jodi - who seems to have finally exhausted her capacity for fear and panic and is back to functioning normally (with occasional twitches).

Sometimes we all hang out together. Sometimes sex is involved, sometimes it's just dinner and conversation. I'm learning all sorts of things about Jodi and Joe, too. They're fascinating, both of them. And I'm not sure, but I think Jodi and Joe have a thing going on. Good for them.

Life is good. Sure, I miss the larger community - streets full of activity, purposeful or otherwise; shops open for business; being able to go from one place to another without worrying that an alien centipede is going to catch you off guard and chew your foot off; that kind of thing.

But between Chez Gene and Chez Jodi, I have all the community I need. And most of the time, when I'm alone with Louise, the whole universe is mine. 

  
  


SUSMITA

This is nerve-wracking. When you've waited this long for the other shoe to drop, you just  _ know _ the fucker will be big enough to house a woman with so many children she doesn't know what to do. 

The walkers - and their alien bug components - seem to be avoiding the entire area for hundreds of miles around. 

They're all over eastern Connecticut and points north. West of the Rockies and south of the Mason-Dixon line, there are areas where they're practically swarming. The central US is less overrun, but there have been thousands of sightings and hundreds of deaths. 

The rest of the planet is a mixed bag, but the picture is less clear, based almost exclusively on reports from scattered observers in contact with Howard.

But our little corner of the world is the only ten-thousand-plus square mile area confirmed to be without bugs or walkers. 

What the fuck is happening?

I have these horrible visions of the ground for miles around suddenly exploding, giving way to millions of bugs that have been waiting, growing, multiplying beneath the surface. Of being swallowed up by a writhing mass of alien horrors and reduced to a pulp by a thousand grinding jaws.

Why are they avoiding us?  _ Are _ they avoiding us? Is there a pattern to their distribution? It's not like we haven't seen them at all - we had that outbreak four months ago. Why are they ghosting us, the bastards.

Howard’s current project is to track the bugs and walkers outside what we’re calling the safe zone, and see if they’re actually actively avoiding us, turning around or skirting the edges of the zone.

If they are, the situation is more complicated than we thought. It would suggest that the brain bugs are in long-distance communication on some level. Maybe through chemical signals, like ants. Maybe through inherited memory or some form of instinct. 

Or maybe Ollie is on to something, and they’re intelligent, and word has gotten out that we’ve been effectively freezing walkers, and to steer clear.

If we can demonstrate that we are indeed in a safe zone, at least we can end the lockdown. Of course, the laws of irony state unequivocally that the moment we return to business as usual, the gates of hell will open up and walkers will come flooding in.

Fuck it. You only live once. Might as well get it over with.


	17. Safe Zone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More vamping for time, with some interesting character development by way of stress and smut. 
> 
> Action/adventure to follow, but it may take a few more chapters to get to it.

SUSMITA

I was worried that Danielle was going to have a breakdown. She’s a terrific mayor, but the pressure she’s under at the moment is beyond the call of duty - worse, I think, by far than anything faced by “America’s Mayor,” that evil sociopath Rudy Giuliani, in the wake of 9/11. 

I’m not saying he didn’t handle the situation well. However horrible a human being the man was, credit where credit is due. But I don’t think he would have handled the Zombie Apocalypse nearly as effectively as Danielle Meyer. For one thing, the man had the demeanor of a flesh-eating zombie to begin with. 

Mayor Meyer, on the other hand, has done an excellent job of holding our little community together through months of fear and mind-numbing lockdown. She was starting to lose it there for a few weeks - she did a lot of crying on my shoulder; usually in unison with me. But even when the only way out is through, there  _ is, _ by definition, a way out, and she found it. 

It’s changed her, though, that journey. She’s colder, more aloof than she was before. I don't think her personality has fundamentally changed, but it’s submerged beneath her wartime leader exterior. She’s  _ in charge _ , and as soon as she has the facts she gives commands, not suggestions. There’s much discussion, but little debate. 

If she weren’t already so loved and respected, or the situation were any less dire, it would be a little much in the context of the relaxed, ad hoc community structure we’ve established here. But as disconcerting as it is to, at least temporarily, have my best friend replaced by a commander-in-chief, it  _ is _ reassuring to feel like someone is in control.

It’s an illusion, of course. There’s not much Danielle can do to affect the situation, and her commands almost always align with the conclusions of the experts with whom she consults. Those would be mostly Miriam, Anais, Howard and me. 

No pressure.

Most of those conclusions actually amount to no more than gut instincts and wild, if reasonably well informed, guesses. We’re in contact with a handful of scientists spread out all over the planet, who have been risking - and sometimes losing - life and limb trying to study the bugs. There’s a general consensus that they’re intelligent - far more intelligent than similar organisms native to the Earth, at the very least. 

Whether they’re actually sentient is another question entirely, and studies have been inconclusive. One thing, however, is for sure: they are actively avoiding an approximately 100-mile radius around Seymour’s Bay.

That being established, Danielle has lifted the lockdown. All of our mantis-bots are patrolling a 20-mile perimeter around the town, and the majority of the dragonflies are monitoring the edge of a 35-mile radius. Howard’s two satellites are, between them, scanning the 100,000 square miles around us. And while it’s reassuring that the loose bugs and walkers are keeping their distance from us, the number of them sighted outside the safe zone is truly unsettling. 

Over five thousand walkers are lumbering across the North American landscape. The numbers outside the range of Howard’s satellites are unclear, but based on reports from the maybe 50 people Howard is in contact with worldwide, we’ve put together a rough estimate of, approximately, Bad. Really, really bad.

Still, it’s a relief to see the streets of Seymour’s Bay full of activity. Nervous activity, to be sure; people are still skittish, worried that the safe zone could go away at any moment, which, for all we know, it could. I don’t think anyone has completely let their guard down yet. 

But there’s also a general sense of awe that we seem to be the Chosen Ones, inhabiting the one safe haven on the planet. Surely that means something. Personally, I’m not convinced that it isn’t something horrible. That they don’t just find us particularly tasty, and are saving us for dessert.

Meanwhile, though, it’s good to be outside for longer than it takes to dash, terrified, to my car. In a way, it’s silly - however safe we are, we’re no safer than we were two days ago when Danielle ended the lockdown. But I guess there’s something about Command-mode Danielle that inspires confidence. Logic be damned, I felt safer the moment she declared lockdown lifted.

I just hope that when the crisis is over, I get my best friend back. The new boss is not the same as the old boss.

  
  


TINA

Victor had just started testosterone therapy when the world ended. Through scavenging and luck, he’d managed to keep it up for around a year, and some of the resulting changes were irreversible. I told him it didn’t matter to me, but insists on preparing me for the results.   
  
“As you’ve already seen, I still have some of the extra facial hair. Honestly, I wish there were more of it. I always wanted a beard, but all I get is this random stuff. I’ve thought about shaving it, since it’s patchy and really doesn’t have the desired effect, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

_ Dammit, Victor, I already know all this.  _

“At least I didn’t get the male-pattern baldness,” he says. He has a beautiful, short afro. I keep stopping myself from running my hands through it, because I don’t want to be one of  _ those _ white people. But now I realize I’m in bed with the man, and it’s perfectly alright, and I give in to the urge. He’s clearly pleased at the sensation, but very briefly; he has more to say.

“Of course, my fucking tits are back. They were always small, and if they were a little smaller, I could think of them as man-boobs - I’ve got a little extra padding anyway - but no such luck. I’m going to keep my binder on, ok?”

“Of course. Look, Victor,” I say, nuzzling him, my face against his neck, “it really doesn’t matter. Honestly.”

But he goes on. “The one thing that will look genuinely weird to you is my clit.” I know what’s up. I know about  _ all _ this stuff. He doesn’t need to educate me. But maybe he just needs to say it all himself, for his own reasons. 

“When you take T, your clit gets a  _ lot _ larger, and the effect is irreversible. So I look kind of intersexed, like I’ve got both parts, but one of them kind of in miniature and not formed exactly right.

“If that phases you, or puts you off, I swear I won’t blame you. It’s strange. It’s...”

“Is it still sensitive?” I say.

He smiles. “Hell, yeah.”

“That’s all I need to know.” I climb on top of him and lean down to kiss him. Hard. I’m not fucking around. 

“Mmmm,” Victor hums into my kiss. When I finally release my lock on his lips, he says, between giving me sweet little smooches “god damn, it’s been” smooch “so long. I” smooch “forgot what it was like, just” smooch “passionately kissing someone.”

I rise up to straddle him, cowgirl style (one of my favorites) but he rises with me so I’m sitting on his lap, facing him, my legs wrapped around his hips. He lifts my shirt off of me and tosses it aside with a flourish. It was no secret that I’m not wearing a bra, but still the sight seems to surprise him, or maybe he’s just transfixed. My girls are damn nice, and it always feels good to set them free from the tyranny of clothing, so I’m positively radiant. 

(We’ve been edging gradually toward a clothing-optional household - and why not? Everyone has seen everyone else’s everything.)

I return the favor, exposing more of Victor’s beautiful, smooth brown skin. I haven’t said so, since it could be a sore spot - the roughening of skin texture is one of the effects of T therapy that does reverse if the therapy stops - but I love how soft his skin is. Like silken sheets. I wish I was a cat so I could fall asleep on his belly.

I’ll keep that thought to myself.

We are still for a moment, gazing into each other’s eyes. In his, I see conflict; he’s still nervous about his body, and why wouldn’t he be - it’s the source of his overwhelming dysphoria. It’s not the body he wants, not the body his brain was meant to be carried around in. 

But he has no doubt about his desire for me. That much is clear.

I know he had bad sexual experiences in the past, being at war with his body. That he’s willing to try with me is truly brave. I will do everything in my power to make it good for him.

Starting with this: rethinking my whole position strategy, I roll us over so that we’re lying side by side facing each other, as we were before, then I scootch up a bit so that Victor has easy access to my breasts. He doesn’t need any more prompting than that. He kisses, he licks, he feasts. 

Then, an excellent multitasker, while still kissing, licking and feasting, he reaches down, deftly removes my shorts and undies, and works my clitoris with the skill and confidence of someone who’s owned one their entire life. 

It’s funny - I kind of expected more foreplay, particularly given his past reticence. I thought we’d have to spend a long time building up to this. But clearly the floodgates have opened, and his long-deferred possession for me can wait no longer. And God knows I’ve wanted him, bad, since we first met. So as much as I generally prefer extended foreplay, I have no complaints at the mo--. 

[Pardon me while I have a shattering orgasm.]

\--ment.

Sex within poly or open relationships is about more than just multiple partners for its own sake. Every lover is a revelation, as unique as a snowflake, and every act of lovemaking is a process of discovery, no matter how many times you’ve been with your lover. 

Sure, part of the appeal lies in pure hedonism. Ecstasy on demand. But there’s so much more. You can communicate as much to a person making love with them as you can in the course of a conversation. It’s a different form of information, with perhaps a lower bandwidth, but no less profound. 

Maybe it seems like I’m doing an awful lot of intellectualizing for someone who has just been expertly fingered. But even in the course of that simple act, I’ve learned a lot about Victor. I can tell he’s caught between his tender, nurturing instincts and his desire to be powerful and masculine - he’s been alternating between gently nuzzling my neck as I did his earlier, and simply kissing the bejeezus out of me. I can tell that while he’s not at ease in his body, his need for a physical, sexual connection to another person - me in particular, but, frankly, anyone - is mostly overriding his dysphoria. There are moments when it reasserts itself, and his confidence seems to wane, but mostly he is reveling, as I am, in the feeling of flesh against flesh and satisfaction of bringing a lover to orgasm. God, the way he’s looking at me now; grinning like a maniac, nearly in tears with joy, radiating love, almost awe, for all things Me. 

I’m humbled. I’m moved. 

I’m going to fuck him, hard, as soon as I figure out how, mechanically.

But first, I’m going to give as well as I got, and then some. I take his face in my hands and kiss him slowly, gently. 

Now I run my hand slowly down his side, caressing every inch of his beautiful skin. He’s actually built a lot like me, with feminine curves, which I’m loving though I know it’s one of the things he hates about his body. Maybe I can help him love the body he’s got, leading by example. 

I have plans for Victor. Long term plans.

When I reach his, to him, frustratingly child-bearing hips, I pull down his pants, and then his boxers. He flinches - he’s very insecure about his genitals, though he needn’t be.

I gently brush my fingers along his inner thighs, and he purrs and wiggles his hips. 

I have his attention.

Eventually, I reach my goal. In all honesty, the reality of it  _ is  _ momentarily disconcerting. His clitoris is quite large, maybe two inches long, and thick. Tumescent. With its hood where the head of a phallus would be, it’s basically a scale model of a penis. 

But it’s even more sensitive. I touch it gingerly, and Victor inhales sharply, hissing, and exhales with a soft moan. I become more assertive, alternating between fingering him the way he did me and giving him a hand job. The latter drives him crazy - the more I treat his oversized clit like a penis, the happier he is.

“Oh, God, Oh God.”

I think he’s getting close, and I have an inspiration. I slide down until I’m in position, and put my black-belt fellatio skills into action.

Victor is thrashing now, continuing to take the lord’s name in glorious vain, faster and faster.

This is great. It feels like the real thing. Sure, by the standards of the average penis, his clit is quite small, but it’s enough to work my magic on. I have this one move that never fails to put Mac over the top. I adapt it to Victor’s dimensions and in a moment he screams, thrusting his hips into my face, and I swear, I can practically feel him coming into my mouth.

Honestly, the lack of semen is one of the advantages to making love to Victor. I enjoy going down on a guy, and I’ve gotten used to the end product, and even learned to swallow, but I’ve never learned to like it. It tastes awful. 

It’s worth it; I love making my lover’s brain explode with ecstasy. But this is actually better because I can pay attention to Victor’s orgasm rather than forcing myself through the process of dealing with a mouthful of come.

And it’s beautiful. It’s more than a physical experience for him. It’s an affirmation of his identity as a man. He just got a blow job from a hot girl; what sexual act is more symbolically masculine?

And honestly, with his breasts covered and flattened by the binder, and something between his legs that has a lot in common with a penis, I have no problem at all experiencing him as male. 

Victor is in heaven. His body is completely relaxed, practically a puddle. I slide up and kiss his belly, then rest my head there. Experimentally, I brush his clitoris with a fingertip. He gasps, and laughs. “Aaaa! No, no, no, I can’t take it.”

He catches his breath. “Good god, you’re good at that. Your husbands are truly lucky men.”

“So,” I say, “is my boyfriend. Any time.”

“Wow.Jackpot.” He chuckles. Affecting Mike Meyer’s German accent from his old SNL “Sprockets” sketch, he says “Okay, now is the part of Sprockets where I fuck your brains out.”

He reaches over to rummage through the top drawer of his side table and withdraws an intriguing item. It’s a strap-on of intimidating proportions - incongruously caucasian in color. 

“This is a really great model - it’s got these rockin’ nubs on my end that feel really great. But when I ordered it, Amazon was out of anything close to my skin tone, so I went with this one and nicknamed it ‘My White Privilege.’”

This cracks me up, and I snort my way into an attack of the giggles. 

“I’ve never had the opportunity to use it,” says Victor, regarding me with a lascivious twinkle in his eye as he dons the device. “Care to take it for a spin?”

“Oh, yeah. But give me a minute - I’m going to have to do some yoga and deep breathing exercises to relax my muscles before you put that in me.” I laugh, but I actually am a little nervous. I’ve never been with anyone even close to that size. That fucker could seriously bruise my cervix.

“Well,” says Victor, I have a few that are smaller, but - being purely selfish here - none of them feel as good to me.”

“What the hell,” I say, “I like a challenge. How about we try it and if it’s too much for me, we switch to a smaller model?”

“Deal,” says Victor.

He lies down, his large, prosthetic, caucasian erection just daring me to ride it. And to do  _ something _ to hide it’s clashing color scheme. What the hell - I figure my vagina’s just the man for the job.

I take it inside me. The sensation is odd. I was afraid it was going to be cold, but it’s not; and too rigid, but it’s as flexible as the real thing. As I put my weight on it, the fiddly bits against Victor’s clit work their magic, and he moans. I have to stifle the urge to laugh, because it sounds just like my “uhhhhhh” tic. And in a moment, I have to keep from laughing again, for as I ride him, he exhales, “Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh!” in rhythm each time I come down. 

If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a wry joke, or maybe an odd tribute to me. But Victor is in no condition to do any such thing. He’s not doing any abstract thinking. He’s lost in a world of pleasure, and of new sensations. It occurs to me that I’m taking his male virginity. This is his first D in V experience. And he’s loving it.

So am I. It turns out I can handle the size of the prosthetic, and moreover, I now get why some women need a big dick. It’s amazing having more - almost all - of my insides stimulated at once. We’ve only been at it a minute or so, and I’m already most of the way to a brain-melter. 

Victor is close, too. We’re both bathed in sweat - for my part, riding the huge artificial phallus requires much more upward motion, and more control coming down lest the thing bang against my cervix, so I’m really working my legs and my core. I’m going to be sore tomorrow.

Worth it.

And Victor hasn’t a session like tonight in... well, ever. We’re both a little out of shape, and the workout - and many more to follow - will do us good.

I’m almost there, and so is Victor. I wonder if I can control myself just right and give us simultaneous orgasms. They’re a much rarer phenomenon than movies would have you think, particularly with new lovers just learning the details of each other’s nervous systems. But I think I can finesse it.

So close, so close. Victor’s almost there. If I can hold out for about fifteen seconds...

Yes! Oh, wow, oh wow. I’m there, and there goes Victor!

This is a big one - in proportion, come to think of it, to the size of Victor’s “White Privilege” - which I’m still riding, at a mile a minute, too insane in the middle of my brain-melting orgasm to exert fine control on my movements, which is resulting in W.P. banging against my cervix over and over. Now I’m  _ really _ to be sore - and not tomorrow, but in about a minute.

I don’t care. I haven’t had one like this in a long time. It’s rolling through me, my whole body, in waves. I’m not sure, but I think I’m screaming, Louise style. I must be, because Victor is clearly doing so as well, and I can’t hear him over whatever sound I’m making.

The sensation subsides slowly, over a minute, maybe two, aftershocks from a 10.0, California-destroying earthquake of a climax.

Aw, crap, bad choice of words - I remember, as the fog of ecstasy lifts, that California did, in fact, suffer the Big One and remains in ruins. And probably will for centuries.

I force the thought out of my head and watch as Victor rides out his own aftershocks, smiling beatifically. I lift myself up off of W.P. and roll over on my side. I hold Victor and curl around him, my legs across and under his, and press myself tightly against his side. I’m struck again by the softness of his beautiful brown skin. I hope he can come to terms with it eventually, because it gives me goosebumps just touching him. 

It’s another minute or so before he emerges from his post-coital, blown-mind trance. Finally, he says. “That was amazing. I swear, I could feel myself inside you. And that’s twice in ten minutes that I’ve had the best damn orgasm of my life.” I press myself even closer against him. 

“I’d be lying if I said _exactly_ the same - I mean, mine were  _ up there _ with my best ever, but there’s a lot of competition for first place. I’ve had a lot more experience.” 

He reaches over to idly fondle my breast. I pause to concentrate on enjoying it for a bit. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I’ll help you catch up.”

“Actually,” says Victor, “that’s mathematically impossible, if you think about it.”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to find a few more lovers.”

Victor frowns. “I don’t know. I don’t think I could be comfortable with anyone else.”

“Oh, you’ll get there,” I say, “with a little coaching. I promise, by this time next year, I will make you a slut.”

He thinks about this for a couple of minutes while I zone out, floating away on a cloud of silken skin. Huh. What a weird phrase. I must be loopy.

Finally, Victor breaks his silence. “You know, Susmita’s really cute...”

  
  


COURTNEY

Gene is a happy boy. Millie and I just ganged up on him for about an hour and now he’s fast asleep. 

Millie is so cute - I can see why my Genie-Beanie is so into her. I think the cutest thing is that when she’s having sex, she reverts to Batshit Crazy Millie. It’s funny and kind of sweet, because there’s no malevolence in her now. But man, does she get a kooky, demented expression on her face as she completely overpowers Gene. Which is an inspiration to me - I tend to let Gene run the show, but now I’m thinking it’s time for a little Women-On-Top. 

I’m even flirting with the idea of tying him up. I’ve never been into that kind of thing, but I think Gene enjoys being dominated. Maybe just for a change of pace, maybe because he has a thing for it we haven’t explored yet. Either way, I’m taking command, and he’s gonna love it. That’s an order.

We’re mostly back to business as usual. Today was a special occasion, but otherwise, we’re both back to where we once belonged. And as much as I was overwhelmed with my attraction to Millie’s pet Greek god, as much as he makes me quiver, it’s even better with Gene. Danny’s gorgeous, but Gene is beautiful. I love his little fireplug build, his sensitive features, and the way he makes jokes - usually good ones - through most of our lovemaking. 

But above all, I love his mind. His talents, his perception, his kindness. His capacity for loving and being loved. He’s everything to me. I always reserve the right to get a little, or a lot, on the side, but Gene is my world. And with Mel and Jocelyn busy with Jess, he’s all mine.

Millie is dressed now and ready to go hang out with Danny at Wonder Wharf. She crawls over to me (the easiest way to traverse the room-filling mattresses), says “that was awesome,” and kisses me on the cheek. “I loved just watching you guys doing it. It was beautiful. You’re perfect together. Never let him go.”

“Never ever,” I say. 

She makes her way to the door. Steps out, and turns around to face me. “You’ll still let me borrow him once in a while, right?”

“Mi Genie es su Genie,” I say. 

It’s been a week since the lockdown was lifted, and so far, so good. The inexplicable safe zone is holding, and people have mostly started to relax. Our local scientists post updates every eight hours, and they’re always the same: 

“The perimeter holds. No walker or bug activity within the Safe Zone.”

Works for me. 


End file.
